


Don't Die

by AliceDays



Category: The Walking Dead & Related Fandoms, The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Child Death, Dirty Sex, Dirty Talk, Discussion of Abortion, Drug Use, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Infant Death, Lots of Sex, Miscarriage, POV First Person, Pregnancy, Separations, Sex, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Triggers, Violence, cursing, sex is graphically described
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-19
Updated: 2020-09-07
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:21:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 59
Words: 282,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22804762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AliceDays/pseuds/AliceDays
Summary: We’ve been placing our future in other people’s hands. We’ve been looking for help since the beginning, and it hasn’t worked at all until now. I think it’s time we stop. We gotta stop looking for others to be our solution, we gotta stop believing other places and other people will save us. What we gotta do now is take control of our situation and make it happen. We, not others!
Relationships: Daryl Dixon & Original Female Character(s), Daryl Dixon/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 192
Kudos: 157





	1. Prologue - Day 0

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've posted this story before and deleted it. I felt the need to rewrite it, changing it all from the third-person to the first. I've always written in the third person but for some reason, I was having trouble with this one. So I started it all over and I feel it's better now. I hope you all enjoy it as much as I do!
> 
> And just as a comment: I started this story years ago when I didn't ship Daryl with anyone. Now I do, I'm Caryl though and through. BUT, as the story already existed before and I love Sam and I love Sam with Daryl, this story will keep up with no traces of Caryl other than heir friendship. But I do ship them.

Day 0

The city bus that stopped on the corner of 3rd St and Davis Avenue was nearly empty. It broke the eerie silence of the street to drop off a lone person, who stood there, back to the door as it closed and the bus went on its way down the street. Hands on the pocket of her black hoodie, Sam looked to her left to see the bus rattle away, discreetly feeling for the sheathed blade she kept hidden on the waistband of her jeans. She kept it with her all times, a habit that made her feel safer, stronger. Starting to walk, she kept her head down but her eyes up, attention on its peak. Her steps were silent, her old, worn-out tennis shoes light on the hard asphalt, but her rapidly pounding heart sounded loud on her ears as a dog leaped up the fence she passed with a sudden, deep bark. She took an involuntary step to the side, hand flying to grip the knife handle on the sheath. It wasn’t safe to walk around there at night, she knew that by experience. Eyeing the dog for a moment, as it kept barking angrily, she forced herself to breathe in and out and adjusted the straps of her small backpack from where it rested over her silver-blonde dreadlocks.

It was a simple seven-minute walk from that corner to her house, but it felt like an hour.

Turning on the corner of 7th St, Sam should have been relieved to be close to her house, but she wasn’t. Her heart thumped hard again as she took a couple of steps after the corner and voices reached her ears. Loud, menacing laughter traveling through the air from a house near the end of the street, about a hundred yards away. Not far enough. Sam had counted her steps over and over again, eyes always darting around.

She knew that street in its details. The houses there were not close together, big spaces and trees between them, no fences. The blue house on the left corner was the nicest one, with the nicest people, an elderly couple who always smiled at her when they met, even though they never spoke. She felt sorry for them, growing old in a neighborhood like this. To her right, a long line of trees with no houses, cricket singing in the warm night. The second house had a nice but now overgrown front yard, a big For Sale sign stuck on the grass for a long time now. The first two houses on the right side belonged to just one family; loud people who were always crossing the yard between them, fighting daily and yelling at each other, but tonight the voices she heard didn’t come from there but from the next house on the left. Two-story, old yellowing white paint, chipping brown windows and railings. Four steps lead up to a small porch, and an old, decaying couch under the window, now littered by a small group of men under the dim light. It wasn’t a rare occurrence; they were there many nights a week.

Sam looked around once again and over her shoulders, checking if she was really alone, and removed her right hand from her pocket, only to snake it around the knife handle once again. Reassured it was really still there, she let her slightly trembling hand move back into the pocket, lowered her head and hastened her steps, but didn’t run.

Empty beer cans and a strong smell of low-quality weed decorated the place. Tonight there were three men other than the two who lived there. A man she knew to have a weird nickname like Gecko or something was sitting on the top step, back to the railing, lighting up the joint with a lighter. There was another sitting on the couch, she couldn’t see him properly behind the railing and the overgrown bush that tried to decorate it, but she saw enough of him to know it was the weird guy who lived at the end of Anderson Street, three blocks away from here. He was named after a letter. She didn’t even try to remember which one now. There was another man sitting on the floor in front of the door, a can in hand, draining it. She heard him belch when he finished, and he laughed throwing it to the floor by his side. Elbows resting on the railing, looking out at the street, was the younger of the two brothers who lived there, cigarette in hand, his expression guarded, looking pissed off like he usually looked. Finally, on the arm of the couch, the older brother, graying shaved head, a smirk playing on his lips as his light blue eyes saw her approach.

A cold chill started on the bottom of her spine and traveled up to lodge on the nape of her neck. One by one the men saw her, and she knew what was about to happen. They never permitted her to go by them in peace. That had never happened and Sam was not optimistic enough to think tonight it would be different.

“There she is!”, Sam heard Merle coo aloud in his hoarse, drunkenly drawled voice. “Done a lotta studyn’ today? Did ya give it good to the teacher for em’ good grades?”, he yelled and laughed, the others echoing him, highly entertained. They followed his rude, inappropriate comments and gestures, things Sam tried to ignore and stop herself from being offended by, but as usual, she failed miserably. She wanted to disappear, or better yet, she wanted them to disappear. To close her eyes and to see them gone when she opened them, but no, she didn’t dare to close her eyes. She kept them open and attentive, looking at each of the five men once again.

Only one of them was quiet, not following the others' lead, light blue eyes like his older brother’s fixed on her now, teeth biting on his lower lip’s skin. The younger brother was not much older than Sam herself. He was the only one whose voice she didn’t hear on those occasions. He never said anything and she had never seen him laughing at what the others say. But he was there, and he didn’t stop the others from humiliating her every other night, so to her, he just as much a threat as the others. Sam looked away, walking even faster, trying to dodge the impending situation, but it was too late. One of the men, the one who had been sitting on the couch, was already up and crossing the front yard over the poorly kept grass in quick steps. He stood in front of her, blocking her way. His name was D, she remembered now. Sam didn’t know what it stood for, she had never heard his real name, but she liked to imagine it was Dickhead.

It was his last name. The first name was Dead.

He smiled down at her, the smell of beer on his breath, with barely any teeth left in his mouth at all, except a few stained, yellowed teeth. Blonde, oily hair falling over his forehead almost covering his blue, reddened eyes. He wore a ragged tank too short to cover his protruding belly.

“Where ya goin’ sweetheart?”, he said opening his arms to block her way.

She stopped, just like her breathing did for a second. “Get out of my way, D”, she growled between clenched teeth. 

“C’mon, sugar, let’s go inside and have us some fun.” And with that, he grabbed her left arm just above the elbow, strongly, and turned towards the stairs, forcing her with him.

Her hands fell from inside the hoodie pockets. The other men got up from their positions to watch as Sam struggled to make D let go of her arm, urging him to pull her harder. Among them, Sam saw Merle up and attentive, smugness gone from his eyes, something unreadable taking its place. The men’s voices filled her mind of any further thought, D’s fetid breath suffocating her.

“Let go!”, she hissed aloud, arm bouncing strongly back and forth trying to escape, but he was stronger, even in his inebriated state.

“Not gonna happen, sweetie”, he smirked as he pulled her strongly against his chest, one arm circling her lower back, pressing her hard against him. “Been patient enough for years just talkin’ and hearin’ ya always bitchin’.”

“I’m warning you, D, get your fuckin’ hands off of me!”

He laughed aloud, the sound making a cold chill travel up her spine again, forcefully pulling her to the middle of the Dixons’ front yard. “Well shit, would ya look at the dirty mouth on ya!”

“Son of a bitch!”, she barked as he spoke, her free arm thumping against his chest with a clenched fist.

“You gonna show me how dirty ya can be, princess”. With that, he put even more force to his grip and pulled her to him, his mouth crashing against hers, his tongue moving over her tightly closed lips, trying to force its way into her mouth. Her stomach churned, bile rising to her throat. Eyes wide open, Sam saw as her two neighbors moved from where they had been watching it all so far. Her heartbeat even faster, now almost painfully as they both walked down the steps heading in their direction. The pair stopped dead in their tracks a moment later, though, as D’s loud, hoarse scream filled the night around them and cut off the laughter coming from the porch. He pushed her away from him, a hand touching his lips, eyes wide in horror as he saw his own blood run down.

Sam’s trembling hand wiped the blood from her own lips and spat on the floor, features showing just how disgusted she felt now, her hand already reaching for the knife on her waistband sheath.

“Fuckin´ bitch!”, D yelled, all signs of laughter gone, blood dripping from his lower lip. “Gonna show ya not to disrespect a man!” Raising his hand, he slapped her across the face, strong enough to make her head swirl to the side. She caught herself before stumbling to the ground, and just as she regained balance, her hand came up so quickly the other men almost missed the movement altogether, but D saw it and froze in place, eyes glued to the girl in front of him.

Blood stained her lips, a mix of rage and disgust in her eyes, and now a knife pointing to his throat.

“I. Warned. You”, she whispered menacingly, pausing after each word.

“I know whatcha need, kitten”, D said in a low voice, the smile returning to his bit down, bloody lip, “ya need a man to calm yer nerves. Ya ain’t of ‘em lesbos, are ya?”

“If ya ever touch me again – fuck, ya ever even look at me again, I swear I’ll cut off your dick and shove it up your ass!”, she hissed venomously and pressed the knife further, D taking a tentative step back and the tip of the knife pressed into his skin. She raised her voice then, hating that it trembled a little, “Now get the fuck outta my face!”

“Alright, alright, sugar.” He laughed and raised his arms in mocking surrender, taking more steps backwards to the house. “Just kidding anyway, keep ya panties on”. He turned to his friends to see them laugh at his absurdly stupid joke. “Tough one, ain’t she?”, he smirked at the other men and looked at her again over his shoulders, a dangerous smirk and a threatening glint in his eyes. “Won’t mind taming it”.

Sam followed his movements with her knife, still pointing it to him, her hand trembling a little even as he stepped up to the porch. Only then she looked at the others. Merle hadn’t moved and he wasn’t laughing, his hand touching at the gun tucked under the back of his waistband. Sam became sure he’d shoot her on the spot if she went any further with D. The others laughed with him as he approached, clapping him on the back, complimenting him for his attack like he was their hero. Merle’s younger brother, Daryl, was standing by him, observing the scene, his eyes looking dangerously at D and then back at Sam. Her narrowed eyes met his for a moment as she started to back away, eyes darting over every man there as she increased the distance between them. She finally turned around and retreated in hasty steps towards her house, the too-small distance between them feeling much longer as she did, her ears still trained on their vicious voices.

Bounding up her own front steps, Sam risked one last gaze at the neighbors’ house and caught Daryl watching her unlock the door, desperate for the psychological safety being inside would bring her. Once inside her house, she locked the door, knife still in hand, knuckles white from gripping it so hard. She faced the door for a long moment, half expecting it to be forced open at any second now. As long moments passed and nothing happened, Sam felt her legs threaten to give away and lowered herself to the floor, pulling her knees tight onto her chest.

She was sure the men didn’t hear the rage that came out of her in a low, throaty scream.


	2. Day 1

I had just changed busses, leaving the first one and taking the second on my way to work. I had to get up before the sun could even start to pale the Savannah horizon if I was to make the early morning shift to wait on breakfast tables. It was a nine-mile distance between home and the 24/7 diner close to the army airfield. But it was fine, I was used to it.

I sat at the back of the bus, as deep down into the seat as I could, a red hoodie up and covering my head. I knew I may be looking like a crackhead, but whatever. As the bus drifted away, I opened my old backpack over my lap, found a small hand mirror inside and looked at myself in it, maybe for the third or fourth time this morning. Once again what I saw made me relive the slap I’d received across the face, disgust closing on my throat as if it had just happened. My right eye was smeared with a bluish-purple bruise; small, but very visible, even though it was not swollen. Seething, I shoved the mirror back inside and zipped it closed.

I hadn’t slept that night. I just calmed down enough to get up from the floor and go to the kitchen to drink all the water I could manage to drink, pushing down the painful knot on my throat. Moving to my bedroom and locking myself in, light off, I sat on my bed, back to the headboard, knife still close to hand on the mattress, and listened, simply listened for hours. It took an eternity for the house next door to go quiet. Maybe the men had left. Or maybe they had all passed out from drinking so much.

Fuck, last night was hard. I could have used a drink or two.

Ok, who am I kidding? I could have drunk the house down and passed out and never woken up again.

The fury I felt now was for more than D and his friends. It was for more than for being harassed cowardly by a man bigger and physically stronger than me. It was for my own fucking hesitation. Weak, momentary hesitation made me not grab the knife sooner. It had given him time to get hold of me, touch me, lick me, and even after that, to hit me, the mark of his slap angrily visible on my face. I hesitated and I hated herself for that.

I wanted a drink, even now on the bus, going to work. The smell of weed I had smelt last night coming from the Dixon’s was still very much alive in my nostrils. God, I missed it bad. A joint and a glass of wine? Heaven.

People at the diner stared, my co-workers asked if I was ok, what had happened, who did this and to dodge the questions was more work than I had energy for morning. I would have kept the hood on if it was possible, but instead, I had to change the uniform, pull my dreadlocks back, and raised my head, refusing to look down. It was not just my colleagues or manager who gave me weird looks; the customers did, too. Mr. Smith, the inn next door’s manager who had breakfast there daily, wanted to know who the miserable soul who had hit me was. Bless him in his good heart. I thanked him for his empathy as I filled his mug with freshly brewed coffee.

Hours later, midway between breakfast and lunchtime I was almost distracted by the memories of last night, that insisted on coming back when I didn’t want them too. I heard the door open to let in a late customer, the doorbell singing delicately. Jar of coffee in hand, standing behind the counter, I froze in place as she saw Daryl stand there, looking around searchingly as if checking to see if he was at the right place.

His eyes found me in a moment. He took in my beige uniform and white apron garments, looking quickly up and down at me. I knew they looked completely out of character on me because I had blonde, long dreadlocks, which I was pretty proud of, a pierced nose, right arm closed with tattoos, and the left one nearly so, so wearing beige waitressing uniform did, in fact, look weird.

I guess Daryl saw the moment of surprise quickly disappear from my face because I controlled it fast, giving place to sheer coldness and despite. Lowering his head, Daryl walked in my direction, hunched, finding an empty seat by the counter, all the while being followed by my eyes. Silently, he looked up at me again and then down to the counter one more time, as if he couldn’t meet my eyes for too long.

I took a moment to realize I probably should move. I thought of asking Rosa to wait on him, but she was taking plates from the kitchen counter now and making her way to serve some customers. Swallowing a sudden lump on my throat, I breathed in deeply and took the few steps that separated me from Daryl across the counter. I just stood there looking at him, who was still looking down. He was wearing a black Megadeth t-shirt and I hated it because I kinda liked Megadeth. I sighed to get my annoyance under control and took a clean mug from under the counter, placed it roughly there, startling him and making him lookup. His eyes seemed even more clear blue now than by the distance that I was used to seeing them, and I could also see bags under them. It looked like he also hadn’t slept last night. I filled the mug with coffee, eyes still on him.

“Gonna eat?” I asked coldly.

“Eggs,” he mumbled.

Raising my left eyebrow, as I used to do unconsciously, I walked away from him without another word. There was work to do, after all. I placed his order, deciding he was going to have them scrambled, no matter what kind of eggs he had meant. I moved around the diner, waiting on tables, refilling mugs, but I couldn’t stop looking at Daryl every minute or so. He had never shown up there before, I had no idea how he knew where I worked – obviously, it couldn’t be just a coincidence. Why would Dixon come have breakfast ten miles away from his house? The fact that he did so after what happened last night made me wonder. When I reached him again to refill his coffee he was already eating, Rosa must have served him. This time though, Daryl stared up at me.

“What?” I barked annoyed but kept my voice down.

“D’s an asshole.”

“No kiddin’.”

“He hurt ya.”

It was not a question. He looked pointedly at my bruise, ignored fork falling from his hand to the plate with a clatter.

“Yeah,” I rose my chin even more. “And I hurt him back. Your point?”

“Knife might not be enough next time,” he muttered looking down to his plate again and picking up his fork before completing his sentence. “Big guy.”

“I can also bite,” I placed the coffee mug on the counter before resting both her hands on it right in front of him, leaning a little to look at him. “The fuck do you want, Daryl?” I hissed and he looked up. There was a second of surprise in his eyes at the sound of his name. “I can take care of myself,” I continued. “Met worse than D”.

I moved away again, picking up the jar before he could say anything else. On my way towards the tables, I asked Rosa to wait on the band t-shirt guy at the end of the counter for me. Rosa didn’t ask why, just nodded and moved on.

I tried to breathe normally and feel relieved I would not have to speak to Daryl again, but I didn’t. His very presence annoyed me, like a big reminder of what had happened last night – a big, blue-eyed reminder, I hated that the looked that good. I knew Daryl wasn’t the worst of those men; he never did anything wrong to me, but his trying to talk to me after having been assaulted by his friend last night made me angry almost to the limit. My hands were a bit shaky and even that made me angrier.

He left money on the counter and left the diner without another word, not even five minutes later. For some strange reason, it didn’t make things better, on the contrary. I had no idea what good this visit had been for, other than to let me know that the Dixons knew where I worked. The next hour dragged by, the diner emptying little by little until it was possible for the waitresses to take a break. Rosa went first, leaving me alone for twenty minutes to clean up all the tables and sweep the floor. The movement of using the broom surprised me with a slight pain in my arm muscle, right above her elbow. I looked down at it and found a different color on my tattooed hummingbird, some purple where it should be only green. Rosa returned just then, catching me as I had her eyes closed, controlling my breath to keep from having an angry fit.

“You should go to the police,” I heard Rosa say in a heavily accented worried voice, just as I felt her hand on my shoulder. “Ask for help.”

“Don’t worry about me, Rosa,” I tried to smile at the sympathy. “I fought back. I always fight back.”

“But he looks very strong,” she continued, worried stamped on her dark eyes 

“He..?”

“The man in the t-shirt,” Rosa explained pointing to where Daryl had sat before.

“Oh no,” I understood and smiled. “It wasn’t this guy. It was someone else.”

“Oh, ok”, Rosa nodded. “But be careful, comprende?”

“I can take care of myself, Rosa. But thanks anyway. I’ll be fine”.

“Good. Now go, go have a break”, she motioned me, taking the broom off my hand in the process.

Thanking her, I did as dear Rosa said, yanking off the apron from my waist before finding my backpack in a locker under the counter and taking out a pack of cigarettes from inside. I headed out quickly; those break minutes being very necessary to calm me. Leaving through the back door, I walked towards the street across the parking lot as I lit up a cigarette, a plastic cup of coffee held in the other hand. I reached the small fenced area where a dumpster was hidden and leaned on it, inhaling deeply and closing my eyes for a moment.

“Can I get one?” I heard from somewhere to my left.

Daryl was leaning in the same position as I was, on the other end of the brown fence, one knee bent with his foot resting on the wood. I stared, the cigarette between slightly parted lips, eyes narrowed as the smoke reached them.

“The fuck you doin’ here?”, the cigarette almost fell.

Daryl straightened up and took a short step in my direction, but still kept his distance, looking pointedly at the pack of cigarettes in my hand, still asking for one. I rolled my eyes and threw it at him.  
“Lighter’s inside.”

He caught it in the air and stayed where he was, taking his time to take one out, light it up and replace the lighter inside. I still stared at him, carefully watching him inhale deeply, lips closing around the yellow filter, a small pout as he blew the smoke upwards. He looked at me then, catching me staring, but I didn’t mind, eyes still locked on him, a frown clear on my forehead. Daryl took a tentative step towards me, reaching out to carefully give the pack back.

“Not gonna pull the knife on you, Daryl,” I finally spoke out of my shock, as I took it and looked down at my feet and kept on smoking. 

He huffed out a quick laugh. “Jus’ being careful.”

“What you want?” I asked, going straight to the point.

“D’s mad,” he delivered as if it explained his presence

“Boo-hoo”.

“Kept talkin’ ‘bout how he’s gonna get back at ya”.

“Not afraid of him.”

“Ya should be.”

“And why’s that?”

He raised his voice a little. “You know why,” he stated, getting visibly annoyed.

“Yeah, I hurt his fuckin’ masculinity,” my voice sounded louder as I looked up back at Daryl. “And I’ll hurt it more if he comes near me. I told ya I can take care of myself.”

“Ya can’t if he ain’t alone,” his voice chanted very clearly in my ears.

I could tell he was getting pissed. “Oh, he ain’t gonna be alone?” Merle gonna help him? Or you?”

“Not us,” he mumbled. “We ain’t got nothin’ to do with it.”

“Funny, Daryl, how in all the years we’ve been neighbors, you’ve never spoken to me until today.” I paused to take a puff, my back no longer against the fence as I turned to him. “Ya know how long I lived there? Eighteen fuckin’ years. Was a freakin’ kid, and so were you. Tried to talk to you at first, remember that? Only time you talked to me was to say fuck off. Now ya wanna talk? Alert me? What is it?”

“Look, I ain’t never done anything to you,” he flicked the butt of the cigarette away. It fell on the curb, the still-lit ember flying around. “Or Merle. We don’t need all this hate.”

“So Merle never did nothing to me?” I inquired indignantly. “You really think that?”

“What, did he?” Daryl challenged.

“You think humiliating me, scaring the fuck outta me with the things he say, the gestures he makes is nothing? He fuckin’ threatens me every time he sees me. That’s nothin’?”

“Ain’t never touched you,” he said still pissed but a little less forcefully

I also lowered her voice. “It’s a matter of time.”

“Merle ain’t no rapist.” He took one step closer.

“Speaks and acts like one.” I flicked the cigarette away as well and drained the cup of coffee that was still in my hand, grimacing because it had gone cold. “And you, I don’t know why you’re talkin’ to me now. You hear what he and all those fuckers you have around all the time say and you see them do all kinds’a things and all you do is just sit there, doin’ nothin’.”

“Ya know what? Forget it!” Daryl barked angrily, stepping away from me. “Trying to warn ya and ya keep bitchin’ at me,” he turned to go away. “Fuck you.”

I closed her eyes and took a deep breath, my heart was pounding. As I reopened them I watched him walk away for a moment, his steps denouncing just how angry he was.

“Hey!” I called aloud and he stopped and turned, already far away. “When?”

“Tonight,” he yelled back.

“I’ll be ready for him.”

* * *

I’d been going to an adult education program in a community center of Savannah for about a semester now. I’d dropped out before high school and this was a decision I couldn’t regret more. Now I was a thirty-two-year-old adult education student, a waitress at a cheap diner, living in one of the poorest and most dangerous neighborhoods in the city, with no perspectives of getting out of there.  
And craving for a glass of wine. Or a bottle.

I lit yet another cigarette – this habit I didn’t even try to quit – taking a deep puff and closing my eyes for a moment. I’d been in this position for almost two hours, standing at my bedroom window, looking out, hidden by the shade. The window allowed me to look out at the front yard, the unkempt yellowish grass, and old, rusty barbecue grill abandoned there for a long time. The family across the street was fighting again, unrecognizable yelled words filling the otherwise silent, deserted street.

The only light in the house was in the living room, the TV also on, soundless. There was a talent show tonight. Bobbi-Jo was out again, of course. My roommate – I refused to call her anything other than that – was out more often than not. It was better this way, being alone at home tonight because I knew something bad was about to happen. D was coming, I was sure of that. I did question myself as to why I believed what Daryl said that morning, but the fact was that I just did. Merle’s voice could be heard from inside the house next door, speaking loudly as he usually did, although he didn’t have friends over tonight.

That was weird; it was Saturday. He always had people over on the weekends.

I had been watching the right side of the street attentively, guessing that if someone came, he’d come from the Dixon’s house direction, but a movement by the left side caught my attention. Two figures approached and I thought they’d come from the empty field there was at the end of the street. They lurked in the shadows until the street light let me see their faces. I took a moment to recognize them, and I was glad to see it wasn’t Merle or Daryl. I tried to remember the name of the second man who was walking with D, was it Owen, or Morty?

There was no chill in my spine this time. I was ready.

The two men approached my front steps and tried the door, finding it locked. Nobody in this neighborhood left their door unlocked, especially at night. I put her cigarette down in the ashtray that sat at the window frame and withdrew from it slowly, heading to the door that led to the living room. Standing there, I could see their shadows going around the house, moving to the kitchen door. With another couple of steps, I was by the kitchen counter that separated it from the living room, and paused there, taking a deep breath. I felt calm and prepared, but my goddamn heart insisted on beating fast.

The door clicked open after a moment and was pushed in with a careful, slow shove. I heard it creak but nobody came through it for a moment. D took his time in appearing, only his head first, taking in the space in front of him. He saw me then, standing right there on the opposite side of the kitchen counter. His eyes hardened instantly, a creepy disparity with the smile bloomed in his lips.

“What are you doing here?”, I asked breaking the silence, chin raised.

“Well, well, well”, the man drawled, taking a step into the kitchen; Behind him, the second men followed close, also looking around, “Not so brave now, are ya?”

“You should leave,” I affirmed, eyeing Owen – or Morty, as he took careful, slow steps into the living room, while D stood where he was.

“Yeah, not gonna happen, sugar,” D licked his teeth.

“Don’t think ya understand,” I dared to smirk. “Ya should go…For your sake.”

They laughed, both men exchanging amused, yet still hardened looks.

“Say please, sweetass,” the second man said from now almost behind me. “Always wanted to know what ya’d sounded like beggin’ me.”

“This is because of last night, ain’t it?”, I asked looking over her shoulder at him and them back at D. He had taken a couple more steps towards me. “Thought you said you were only kiddin’. No big deal, huh?”

Behind me, the man snorted just as D jawed “Well, ya see… Thing is, Samantha, I ain’t actually foolin’ around. Not kiddin’ at all.”

“Yeah, thought so. So what, you couldn’t get me then, so had to bring by a friend as a backup, ‘cause ya didn’t think you could do that by yourself?”

“Can take ya easy on ma own, girl,” D opened his arms and shrugged, “but I ain’t no stingy guy, ya know?” He stepped towards me one more time, now closer. Just close enough. “Got no problems sharin’ stuff with ma boys.”

“I ain’t no stuff, D”, my voice was still collected even as my eyes traveled around the room to take in Morty – or Owen and D again.

Don’t hesitate…

“And just so ya know…” with a whisper, I took a slow, deliberate step towards D. “My name’s not Samantha.”

With a sudden intake of breath, I raised her right arm, the heel of my hand connecting upwards with his nose. He cried out, hands flying to cover his face. As much as I wanted to see him bleed for the second time in twenty-four hours, I had no time. The man behind grabbed me, arms circling my shoulders from behind, holding me strongly.

“Chill out, angry bird!” he growled in my ear, taking the opportunity to bury his face in my neck. I almost puked; he stank.

“Fuckin’ bitch!”, D cried yet again, hands dropping allowing me to see blood oozing from his broken nose, even as I struggled against the arms around my torso. He licked the nose blood out of his stubble and then smirked dangerously. “Told ya, ya cunt, ain’t gonna mind taming ya.”

His smile dropped, though, and I saw surprise in his widening eyes when he saw me reach for my waistband.

“Owen, look out!” D yelled.

Oh, so it’s Owen. 

Owen couldn’t react fast enough. I knew he was distracted by grinding his hips against my ass, grunting, arms keeping me in place. I raised her arm, fueled by disgust, and lowered it strongly behind me.

He screamed and let go.

I didn’t know where I hit him, but I heard his heavyweight hit the floor, his movement making the knife slide out of him and remain in my hand. D lunged for me and I raised the knife hand again, but he was faster than I had expected. With the force of his weight, he pushed me to the ground, falling in top of me and holding my arms down against the floor. I struggled and I might have screamed without even noticing it, but he was near twice my size. As I fought him, he laughed, drops of spit and blood falling from his open mouth to my cheek.

I was probably going to vomit after it all was over.

D used his knee to press my right forearm on the ground. It hurt badly and I couldn’t move for a painful moment, I thought my bone might break. He took the knife I was still gripping and pressed it to my throat.

“Now how does it feel, huh?” he roared and a shower of spit fell down on her. “How does the other side of the knife feel?”

“You’re a coward, ya know that?” I enraged up at him. “And fuckin’ pathetic, ‘cause ya can’t get a girl to want to fuck you!”

“Funnier that way.” D replied and licked his blood again. D was sitting on my stomach, just under my breasts, and he left my left arm free.

Damn males, always underestimating woman. My free arm reached down for a second knife, hidden inside my boot. My fingers brushed over the handle for a moment before they closed firmly around it. I felt the coldness of the blade slide over my skin, leaving a burning sensation behind as I cut myself pulling it out.

There was no more thought then. I didn’t aim, I didn’t plan, I didn’t even breathe. In a second, the knife was stuck in the side of his neck, blood oozing out, rolling down his neck and shoulders, raining down onto my face. I may have screamed but I’m not even sure, because I was looking up at D still on top of me, his eyes wide in despair, mouth opened in a silent, desperate scream. I pushed him away from me with all the force I could at the moment and he fell to the side, unmoving. 

I sat up, unable to think of anything other than the layer of blood and spit on her face.

Behind me, I faintly heard Owen shout “You fuckin’ whore!”, but just barely over the sound of my own heart pumping on my ears. I looked back over my shoulder and saw him getting up from the floor, cradling his hurt thigh. He was behind me and holding the knife D dropped. “You killed him, bitch!”

I had no time to react and I knew it. In that split second, all I thought was fuck, looking up at his red, ire filled eyes, but something hit him on the shoulder and he screamed again, the knife falling from his hand to the blood washed floor faster than his own body.

I whirled my head around looking for the source of whatever it was that had happened, and there was Daryl walking into the room, some sort of medieval looking weapon raised and aimed at Owen, who was now crawling backwards until his back hit the couch, right hand cradling left shoulder, screaming in a very unflattering way.

“Shut up!” Daryl barked approaching and looking down at his pathetic form. “Another word and the next is through your eye”.

Astonished, I saw another form entering the room as well and moved my eyes from Daryl to see Merle also moving in. The man leaned down to get the knife on the floor and away from Owen’s reach. He stood by my side and handed it back to me, the blade coated in thick, dripping blood.

“Think this is yours,” he said calmly.

I looked up at him from where I was still sitting on the floor, legs straight in front of me, mouth agape. Soundless, I took it from Merle’s hand and looked around to my other side. And saw D’s lifeless body.

I had just killed a man.

* * *

Owen was silent and breathing hard, back still to the couch, a hand on his shoulder, the other on his thigh, both pressuring his deep, painful wounds. His eyes were red and trained on D’s body. He was dead, blood pooling around him, lifeless, opened eyes staring up at the ceiling. I was sitting on the other couch, hands resting on my knees, unable to tear my eyes off his inert form.

“Bobbi-Jo’s gonna kill me,” I mumbled to myself and I’m not even sure why because Bobbi-Jo’s reaction was the least of my concerns now, and started patting my jeans pockets looking for a pack of cigarettes. I found it in my back pocket, all creased, and took one out. It was nearly broken in half, but I didn’t mind. Placing it between my lips, my fingers trembled a little before I started patting myself again looking for the lighter.

Daryl approached, lighting his own and offering light mine too, without a word. I looked up at him for a moment before leaning in to light it. After I had taken the first puff, Daryl handed me a piece of cloth. “For your face”, he grumbled as I took it, once again looking up at him questioningly. When I did nothing except for holding it, he made a swiping gesture over his own face.

“What are we gonna do?” Merle’s hoarse voice came from the kitchen, pulling me out of a daze. “Can’t call the cops.”

“It was self-defense,” Daryl answered and Merle laughed.

“I don’t want no fuckin’ cops pokin’ around. You used the fuckin’ crossbow as a fuckin’ weapon. Wanna go to jail, too?”

They discussed it heatedly but in low voices. Everything else was silent. The house, the street, the neighbors. It was unnerving. I looked from D to the cloth Daryl handed me and stared at it for a second before bringing it up to scrub my face. It was cool, Daryl must had wet it in the kitchen sink, and it made me snap back to reality.

“What about him?” I asked looking at Owen and the Dixons went quiet. I took another puff. “They broke in and attacked me. I was jus’ defended myself. Ya heard me scream, came to help. You didn’t kill anyone, I did.”

“Should’ve killed him, too,” Merle raised his voice and walked from the kitchen around the counter, stepped over D’s body and crouched in front of Owen. The man’s eyes widened impossibly and he flinched. “Smart, brave guy, huh, O?” Merle spoke slowly. “While we’re at it, why don’t ya tell me where the fuck you hid my dope, huh?”

I didn’t want to hear a fucking word of it. I got up and went to the kitchen where Daryl was standing looking at the two men. “I don’t fuckin’ believe your brother”, I told him. “A fuckin’ crime scene and he wants to know about his meth.”

“Ain’t nobody gonna miss him,” Daryl said. “Fuckin’ junkie, no family.”

“You’re talkin’ about D now, right?” I asked filling a glass of water from the sink, cigarette between two fingers. Daryl snorted rudely as I drank it quickly. “Rapists, both of ‘em,” I completed. “I just wish I’d done more to him before. Shoud’ve cut off his sorry excuse of a dick.”

“I say we get rid of the body. Nobody gonna look for him.” Merle suggested.

“What about him?” I asked again, my chin pointing at Owen, surely considering dumping D’s body an excellent option.

Merle got up and kept looking down at Owen. “Owen ain’t gonna say a word, is he? He’s good to go on girls and to steal from passed out friends, ain’t ya, O? Give ’im someone bigger, he’ll shit his pants. Ya owe me, O, gonna forget that?”

On the floor and looking up, wide eyed, he grumbled ‘no’ many times, terrified.

“Don’t forget ‘bout the girl here”, Daryl said pointing at me with his hand. “Beat ya, didn’t she?”

“Hey, ya got any food?” was what Merle said when he turned back towards the kitchen. “I’m starvin’.”

Stunned, I stared at him, hips against the counter, deep frown on my face, cigarette still between my fingers, eyeing Merle with his slightly raised eyebrows, sincerely waiting for me to answer something.

“What?”

“Food?”, he repeated, and the look he had was one other than the evil fun, lustful one he’d always given me. He seemed just normal; not exactly friendly, but simply like a regular person would treat their neighbor when saying hello on the sidewalk, instead of in their living room with a dead body between them.

“Hum, ah…” I stuttered in shock. “The fridge,” I finished motioning my thumb over my shoulder. Merle nodded and once again stepped over the dead man, his boots making a blood trail on the worn our wooden floor, went around the counter and joined me and Daryl inside the kitchen. He opened the fridge and crouched down to examine its contents, my eyes glued to the back of his head and very aware of his movements, until Daryl caught my attention by poking my arm with a finger.

“Hey”, he murmured and I looked at him, eyes still somewhat perplexed. He continued. “You ok?”

“Yeah. They didn’t hurt me.”

“No, I mean…” he dragged on and pointed at D’s body with his chin.

“Yeah,” I repeated, trying to be clearer, but still needing to clear my throat before continuing. “He deserved it. I’d do that to any fuckin’ rapist. Might jus’ do that to Owen. Ain’t gonna lose sleep for him.”

Slowly, he nodded avoiding my eyes to instead look around, down at Merle and at the two men on the living room floor. The three of us were silent for a while as I finished my cigarette and Merle fussed over how little food there was in the fridge. Daryl turned around to lean back on the counter to avoid staring at D’s dead body, his big, heavy weapon resting against the wall near him.

“Hey, what’s that?” I asked Daryl, pointing at it.

“Wha’, that? ‘S a crossbow.”

“You shoot arrows with it?” I approached it on the wall and bent a little to see it better.

“Yeah, like a normal bow but the mechanism releases it.”

I straightened again and looked at him. The thing was pretty damn cool and now that I was getting calmer I remember the image of him entering the room with it raised, his arms tense holding it up and damn. I didn’t really know or like him very much but let’s be honest, it’s not like I was blind or anything.

But “Badass,” was all I said as I returned to lean against the counter. He nodded, a bit surprised, eyeing me for a moment longer.

“What the fuck…” Merle mumbled from nearly inside the fridge.

“Munchies?”, I asked him as I pressed the butt of my cigarette on a forgotten wooden ashtray that rested nearby.

“Course”, he said, getting up and still looking inside it. “The fuck is it with all the veggies?”

“They’re mine. Lower shelves are mine, the upper is Bobbi’s. Make sure ya don’t touch any of hers, she goes nuts when someone –”, I stopped then, making Merle look at me, and I gave him a sudden smile. “You know what, knock yourself out!”

Merle laughed back, “There ya go”.

I turned away from him, and also from Daryl just then, feeling completely mesmerized by what was happening. Two men entering me house to assault me, me killing one of them with a knife to the neck, my nearly stranger neighbors coming to help, having them both in my house since then, Merle speaking to me as if we were friends, and what freaked me out the most – me, talking to him as if it was no big deal. I’d been a long time since I remembered any dream I had; perhaps I was gonna wake up anytime now, and never even remember this insane dream. The taste of the cigarette in my mouth felt real, though. The smell of blood too, now mixed with an extremely sweet smell that, when I looked back at the men to figure it out, I saw it came from a Bosco chocolate syrup Merle was pouring directly into his open mouth. Daryl only shook his head. I wasn’t sure if people could feel such clear, strong smells in dreams.

“Shit!” we all heard Owen say, but none of us looked at him. Daryl fished his own pack of cigarettes from his jeans’ back pocket. “What the fuck? Guys!” Owen spoke again, his voice more urgent.

“Hey, Pop Rocks!” Merle was fussing over the fridge again. “Why’s Bobbi keeping Pop Rocks in the fridge?”

I shook her head. Fuckin’ Bobbi-Jo. “She thinks…Geez, that the heat could make it explode.” Merle laughed aloud and Daryl snorted. “Yeah, she ain’t the smartest person I know.”

Merle was about to say something, I saw him open his mouth, Owen interrupted again, his voice loud and desperate, a tone that made it impossible for any of us to keep ignoring him. 

“No, no, no, shit! Fuck! Help me!”

We all turned at the same time because it was clear that something terrible was happening. But of all things that could have crossed my mind, of any imaginable possibility, I’d ever have thought of that. Nothing in my life so far had ever prepared me to see what I saw then. And nothing, in any of our lives from now on, would ever be the same.

I was frozen froze in place, my brain working too hard to understand what I was seeing to send an order for my body to move. By my side, the Dixons were also silent, stiffened. What we saw was D – whose dead body had been lying there for all that time, probably most of his blood now drenching the room’s wooden floor – agitate with strange and unnatural movement a moment before he sat up, a grotesque sound coming out of his mouth, his back turned to us as he faced Owen, who was now screaming in absolute terror and trying to stand up. Having lost his own fair amount of blood himself, Owen couldn’t, his wounded leg slipping over D’s blood. With now more excited grunts, D moved towards him, crawling faster than he had sat up. Owen wailed for help frantically, as D moved over his sitting form until he reached the chubby, sweat-soaked flesh of his neck, where he urgently sank his teeth. Owen fought him with his only available arm, but it seemed to be no use because D was biting and swallowing his flesh, and he kept doing it as if nothing had happened even after Owen stopped fighting, blood oozing out of the wound fast enough to kill him. He had stopped screaming, dead… Just like his friend was.

Or should have been. Because there was no way he’d be alive after all the blood he lost, and the knife was still fucking poking out of his neck, for fuck’s sakes!

Daryl, Merle and I stared at them, absolutely still. Paralyzed. Shocked. None of us seemed to be breathing, all I could hear was my heart in my ears. My stomach churned and I felt bile in my throat, and that was the only thing that made me sure I wasn’t having a cinematic, sci-fi nightmare. D kept on eating Owen, groaning, moaning, feeding. It was that, literally a person eating another just like that, in my living room.

By my side, Merle broke the silence with a weak, trembling voice, something so unlike him it nearly made me look away from the gore scene happening right there, “D?” As nothing happened, Merle stepped behind me and around the counter, very carefully. “Doug?”

I don’t know what part of my brain could still register that information. D’s real name was Douglas, not Dickhead.

D stopped moving then and damn, I knew shit was about to get even worse. My stomach went cold and I felt a sharp ache on my right wrist – it was a weird thing I had every time I got apprehensive about something as if my mind was sending me a signal of whatever it was, I felt this weird thing on my left pulse point. And there it was, sharper than ever. D’s groans also stopped for a moment as he turned around, still crouched, slowly. And when he faced us, the communal, strong intake of breath sounded over D’s new groan. Merle took a step back, nearly tumbling. That was not D. D wasn’t there, he was dead. His neck still carrying my knife, blood still rolling down his chest, there was a piece of Owen’s flesh hanging from the corner of his bloody mouth, his eyes completely lifeless with a nauseating shade of grey, but yet he stared at Merle, who was the one standing closer to him and raised up, his movements unnatural, and took an unsteady step towards him, moaning wordlessly.  
At his dead, walking body’s back, the front door clicked with the sound of a key turning. The door was pushed open and the sound attracted D, who stopped mid-step towards Merle and turned around. Bobbi-Jo appeared under the doorframe, tight black dress showing up much of her thighs and a lot of her breasts, and she was laughing, completely unaware, pulling some random guy inside with her.

“Bobbi, no!” I screamed coming out of my shock as D lunged his dead body towards her.

“Run!” Daryl shouted by my side.

It was no use. In a second, his teeth were on her face, her cheek coming out in one bite. She yelped and fell to the ground, D on top of her, biting more chunks out of the right side of her face and I swear he wasn’t even chewing, he was just biting piece after piece of her face and swallowing it whole. The man who came with her backed to the wall, close to my bedroom door, eyes and mouth wide open but soundless, shocked frozen.

None of us saw Owen getting up, I was honestly too concerned into trying not to piss myself, my body moving and coming back to my place as I had no fucking idea of what was happening and what to do. Owen’s flesh was missing from his neck and chest. Just as he was crawling across the room, the Dixons saw him, his eyes as dead as a doornail, and they both seemed to wake from a daze at the same time. Daryl moved out of the kitchen towards Owen just as he raised his dead body from the ground to stand up right in front of Bobbi’s friend. His teeth were already sunk into the guy’s neck when Daryl reached and tackled him away, only to turn himself into Owen’s chosen meal.

I still hadn’t moved, watching nervously as Daryl pushed the dead man away from him over and over. On the other side of the room, Merle had shoved D away from Bobbi-Jo and was now fighting him, punching him in the face repeatedly. Looking from one fight to the other, nervousness making me hesitate – and once again hate myself for it – I tried to decide who I should help, and how, for that matter. With difficulty, I registered that Owen seemed to be much closer to Daryl than D was to Merle, so I forced myself to move, the knife Merle had given me back in hand. I rushed over behind Owen and, without a second of thought, stabbed him right on the nape of his neck. Owen’s corpse groaned louder and his movement slowed a little, giving Daryl the opportunity to move away. I had to stare again, though, eyes wide, because Owen hadn’t stopped moving. He had a fucking knife jammed in the base of its skull, but he still moved. How the fuck was he still able to move?!

“We gotta get out! Merle!” Daryl yelled as we both turned for a moment to look at him after a particularly worrying yelp. D was on top of him now, Merle keeping his jaws away by holding him up by the neck. There was blood oozing everywhere and cursing words could be heard coming out between Merle’s clenched teeth.

Daryl tried to keep Owen away from him and I saw that his movements seemed slower now, so I decided to go help Merle. As fluidly as I could with my shaking muscles, I reached for the knife in his neck, held it and took it out of his flesh and slammed it rick back into his temple. I felt bone under the flesh the knife perforated, unable to get in.

“Son of a fuck!” I cried out, reaching for his head with my other hand and grabbing a handful of his hair, pulling it back and further away from Merle. D’s face turned up, desperate groans coming from his open, near toothless mouth. I saw he looked exactly like his old self, except for his eyes and the fact that he was trying to eat Merle. Fighting hesitation once again, I tightened my fist around D’s hair, raised the knife hand and stabbed down, blade easily perforating his eye socket. He stopped moving instantly, groans dying out, as the batteries of a nasty toy had been removed, and his body fell heavily on top of Merle.

“The brain!” Merle shouted from under D’s body, who now I believed to be really dead, because damn, a stab to the keck and other into his brain via his eye just fucking had to kill a person! I understood it at the same time Merle did.

“Daryl! Hit the brain!” I also screamed.

Daryl ran from Owen just as he heard us and Owen looked around, lost for a moment. I crouched behind D and Merle, who remained there under the dead weight. When Owen focused his attention on Daryl again, he had already reached his crossbow, and he had apparently been able to reload it as well, because he then aimed and shot an arrow right into Owen’s eye. The groans stopped and his body remained still for a second before dropping backwards to the ground.

Though only for a moment, silence filled the room once again.

Merle angrily shoved D away from him and sat up looking down at himself seeing all the blood dripping. “What in the fuckin’ fuck was that?” he questioned aloud, trembling, now looking at his hands. He wasn’t answered. I stood up, breathing hard, hands raised to my head. Daryl lowered the crossbow that had still been aimed at Owen. I felt like throwing up. We went silent, the sound of our breaths the only sound in the house. It was like a war zone; blood everywhere. 

The silence was broken by a groan, a different one, coming from somewhere on the ground. We all swirled around towards it, the crossbow raised again. Bobbi-Jo was moving, sitting up and looking right at me. Her jaw moved, slamming closed with a noise, half her face and a large chunk of her neck gone. I flinched.

“Let’s go. We gotta go.” I whispered urgently. The unknown man, his back to the wall and neck torn open, also groaned, much louder. “Now! Get up, Merle!” I shouted down at him and moved to the kitchen door. “Daryl, move!”


	3. Day 11

It all happened too fast.

As I fled from the house through the kitchen door, it was all a blur of running and noise, Daryl and Merle’s heavy, hurried steps right on my heels and the loud groans and growls from the two dead people running after us. Daryl ran faster than me and guided us around my house to reach his. As we reached the porch, I looked back and saw Bobbi-Jo’s dead, stumbling but surprisingly agile body turning the corner, the half-face she still had with perfect makeup, but her eyes void of any life.

We’d entered the Dixon’s house, locked all the doors, and had been there ever since. The house had three entrances; the front door, the kitchen door to the side, which led to another small porch, and the basement hatch door, that had always been locked and blocked by an old wardrobe and had never been a viable way in and out. The kitchen door was now blocked by an old and very heavy dresser, cardboard blocking the glass view. The front door, the only one that was left unblocked, was constantly guarded.

If I had to recollect and tell exactly how things went, I wouldn’t be able to. I don’t know if it was the electricity, the phone signal or the internet that went down first. I don’t remember if we searched through the house looking for things that could be useful before or after we saw dozens of dead people walking around the street, Bobbi-Jo among them. The battery radio still worked, but no useful information came out of it.

It was a virus. It was a parasite. It was bacteria. The cure was known. No, that cure didn’t work. It was the end of the world. Don’t let yourself get bit by one of them. That’s how you die, and then turn. We will find the cure; we’ve got the best people working on it. Don’t get bit until then. The CDCs all over the country were working on it. Go to Atlanta. Go to Atlanta. There’s a center, food and shelter until the cure is found. It’s safe. Don’t get bit and go to Atlanta.

“Yeah, but that ain’t true, is it?” Merle dragged in the same old, drunken voice, a bottle of beer in hand, his back to the arm of the couch, a leg resting along it. “Sons of bitches don’t know nothin’.”

“What you on about?” Daryl asked from his watch by the window.

“D wasn’t bit, was he now?”

“Nope,” I answered from the other couch where I was lying. “Died from a stab in the neck. Only one who bit him was me.”

“What?” Merle questioned, frowning.

“I bit him, you don’t remember that?” I sat up, bare feet resting on the worn out, dusty mat. “The night before. And I sure as hell ain’t one of those fuckin’ dead things”, I finished as I got up, leaning over to reach for a pack of cigarettes from the coffee table. “So ya right, son of bitches know nothing.”

“We don’t know he wasn’t bit,” Daryl said looking at me as I approached him putting one cigarette between my lips and handing him the pack. “He coulda been. Damn fucker was so hammered all the time, coulda forget it happened.”

“Or that.” I agreed.

Daryl threw the pack at Merle after he took a cigarette for himself and we went silent again like we were most part of the time when Daryl and Merle weren’t fighting, foul-mouthed and disagreeing on everything. I hadn’t slept more than a few minutes but felt alert anyway, I’d never needed many hours asleep to feel fine. What worried me now was that, after ten days in that house, their pantry had been emptied while we just sat around, ate, argued and fought and waited for something to happen. I worried that, after so long, nothing was actually going to change. Not if we didn’t take action, any kind of action.

“I’m going home.” Hours later I broke the silence.

“You insane?” Merle asked. “Ya can’t go back there. The street’s taken by those things. Your house’s taken.”

“You gonna end up like ‘em.” Daryl completed.

“Good to see you guys agreeing on something.” I crossed her arms and glared at them. “I’m gonna take things. Food, clothes, first aid kit, weapons. Lots of knives in the kitchen, a pistol in Bobbi-Jo’s bedroom. A rifle on the wall that might still work if we find ammo. Things on the fridge might still be good. Gonna pack all I can, you should too if we’re gonna make it to Atlanta.”

“I ain’t goin’ to no fuckin’ Atlanta.” Merle sat up, both feet now on the rug. “Won’t be nothin’ there. Shelter and food for free to everyone? Bullshit. Rich people, is all.”

“So you gonna stay here?” I opened my arms to gesture around the living room. “And do what? Starve to death? Thirst yourself dry? You don’t even wanna go next door for supplies, how ya gonna get food?”

He didn’t answer, only crossed his arms, shaking his head, a stubborn smirk still on his lips. Big fucking child.

“We know how to kill ‘em.” Daryl said still from his position by the window. “Just gotta stab in the brain and don’t let ‘em come close.”

“I got two good hunting knives there, one in Owen, the other in D. Should get ‘em back too.”

We agreed but said nothing, just moved at the same time as if agreed. Only wondered about that later. Now we just moved to the kitchen table where we had previously set out a sort of kitchen knives. Daryl grabbed two of them as well as his crossbow. I chose a big butcher knife and two smaller ones, and moved to the door sheathing them into my waistband being followed by Daryl.

“Ok, gotta stay together. Don’t go wandering alone.” I told him.

“I’ll have your back while you take the things.” He agreed and we gave each other a sharp nod.

Daryl pulled the door open and we crossed the threshold. The noise of the door and our steps attracted the attention of two dead people who were closest to the house, by the sidewalk. They turned their heads in a slow motion, but as their dead eyes found the two living people on the porch, it was like their bodies came to life, groaning excitedly and taking stumbling but fast steps in their direction.

“Noise attracts them.” Daryl stated what I was thinking a moment before shooting an arrow right into the eye of the male one. We went down the steps and on the bottom Daryl stopped to reload the crossbow, hands working on it but head raised and eyes looking around attentively. The second dead, a female, was closer to me now. “In the brain!” Daryl reminded me.

I walked to the corpse as she walked to me and felt my heart accelerate. Damn, it really was a fuckin walking corpse, like for real, the sci-fi movies had really happened, who’d think that? But I got over that because no time to think right now or it’d bite me. I remembered how soft and easy it had been to stick the knife into D’s eye, so that’s what I went for before it could even get close enough to me. Blood splattered on me as the eyeball popped. Disgusted, all I thought then was that if this was how one got infected with whatever that was, I was screwed. But then again, we’d all touched the dead’s blood ten days ago and hadn’t got sick, so I didn’t really know what to think. Maybe it really was just bites.

“Let’s go.” I put the thought aside for now and we ran across the yard towards my house. There was one more there and Daryl’s arrow reached it easily. As we got to the steps, I heard a groan and looked back. It was Bobbi-Jo, or what used to be her. I stared at her as her corpse started coming to me. After ten days of her death, her figure was now something completely different. Her exposed flesh had started decaying; her eyes seemed even whiter than before, what was left of the skin of her face a nauseating shade of gray. Her eye makeup had oozed down her cheek.

“Sam!” Daryl’s voice called from the porch. I didn’t remember having ever heard him say my name before, I hadn’t even been sure if he knew it.

“Go, I got her.” I told him and heard his steps entering the house only a moment later, like he had paused to decide and then moved. I let Bobbi-Jo approach, less agile than she had been days before, but still quick. When she was close enough, I grabbed her by the neck, keeping her dead, moaning form away from me at arm’s length. My heartbeat got even faster, I could feel in my temple, and my throat suddenly tightening. Bobbi was small, same size as me, but had always been thinner as an effect of too many drugs.

In the moment I looked into Bobbi-Jo’s dead eyes, I remembered years of having her present in my life. The moment I had met her, my dad bringing her to our house and introducing her as his girlfriend. I remember thinking how could she be my dad’s girlfriend if she looked to be my own age. Later, I found out Bobbi-Jo was only seven years older than me. I remembered us moving from Atlanta to Savannah. I hadn’t wanted to. Dad didn’t really want to either, but Bobbi-Jo had insisted. That’s when they started living together, and it was hell on earth. We fought all the time when dad wasn’t home, and in the beginning Bobbi-Jo would pretend to be the victim when he arrived, but after a while, she didn’t even do that anymore. I hated her. I hated her with all my might, I hated her for all the horrible things she told me, for the physical fights, for making dad father suffer, for cheating on him, for spending all the money he had gathered from years of hard work in carpentry. For pretending in front of friends and family that she was suffering when he was dying from cancer. For getting herself a new boyfriend less than a month after he died. I hated having had to stay in the house, hated having Bobbi-Jo still live there. We each owned half of it, neither wanted to leave it to the other. 

“Yeah, you bitch?” I snarled at her. “How’d ya like that? All the trouble ya had and that’s how ya die. Hope it was as painful as his death.” I raised the knife, eyes burning with all the remaining anger I carried with me all this time, “That’s for my dad!”

The knife entered her left eye and I held it in place for a long moment. The knot in my throat tightened painfully, the rage in my eyes being instantly replaced by tears. As I pulled he knife out, a wet noise following a splash of stinky blood, Bobbi-Jo’s body fell to the ground. With a sob, I felt no satisfaction; it just didn’t feel like it was enough. Leaning over, I stabbed a few more times, into her other eye and even into the hard bone of her temple and forehead, and I was probably groaning in anger at each stab because my throat complained quite a bit after. Finally, I stopped and straightened up, breathing hard, staring down at the disfigured head. The hand holding the knife was shaking, tears escaping my eyes.

When I turned, unable to look at the mass of flesh on my feet any longer, I saw Daryl standing under the doorframe, eyes watching me carefully, head turned downwards, crossbow hanging on his side.

“It’s clear.” he said quietly when I just looked at him, not moving or saying anything. “Was just one of ‘em inside.”

Without a word, I climbed the four steps towards the door, but Daryl didn’t move. I stopped on the step below him and looked up, eyebrows raised in question.

“You ok?” he murmured.

“Stop asking me that.”

I’m sure my voice sounded stronger than I felt at the moment. I felt my insides trembling, it that makes sense, my shoulder muscles so tense they’d stop a knife. I took a step up and passed by Daryl, our shoulders touching briefly. Stopping just by the front door, I looked around. It had been days, the house and the bodies smelled horrible, putridly as if the air was solid. I didn’t look at the corpses for long. Daryl had already closed the kitchen door, so the only way in and out was through the front. He was taking his arrow out of the eye of the random guy Bobbi-Jo had brought home that night. I felt bile in my throat again at the smell of the living room of the house I had called home for so many years. It didn’t feel like it anymore.

“Go, I’ll keep watch.” He said carefully while he cleaned the tip of an arrow on the fabric of the couch.

It didn’t take long for me to go through the whole house. I emptied the cabinet of groceries into a backpack, there were several cans there, clothes I thought could be functional into a handbag – clean underwear! I’d been handwashing as reusing the same panties for days now! The two different pairs of boots I had and one I took from Bobbi-Jo. Hers were yellow and I hated it, but whatever. The carton of Morley packs, half a bottle of whiskey. That was for the boys. The first aid kit from under the bathroom sink. A couple of soap bars, toothbrush and toothpaste. I took the gun, checking it was loaded, two boxes of bullets from Bobbi-Jo’s wardrobe, knives from the kitchen, the rifle from the wall, and that was it.

“Hey,” Daryl stopped touching a finger softly on my shoulder as I was heading to the door carrying all the bags by myself, without asking for help. I stopped in a halt and looked up at him, a frown on my face. I was too tense and willing to get the hell out of that house for good to be expecting a touch, even the slighted ones, right now. “Thought ya’d want this.”

He handed me a picture he’d taken from a frame on the living room wall. I saw the back of it first, sloppy handwriting that said “Jack and Sam at Chastain Park, spring 1989”. Turning it around, I saw myself as a nine-year-old sitting on top of a slide, smiling widely, blonde hair shining under the sun. Standing by my side, smiling awkwardly at the camera, was my dad, sandy hair graying on the sides, unkempt stubble, dark brown eyes lit up with contentment.

My throat tightened once again and I felt an uncomfortable prickle in my eyes, and I just nodded without looking up at Daryl. I knew that picture, of course, and it’d been on the wall for years, but I never looked at it. It was painful. I folded the picture carefully twice and reached around to my back jeans pocket, tucking it in. Taking a deep breath, I looked up at Daryl for just a second before looking out the door once again.

“Let’s go.”

We both stopped on the steps, though, Daryl once again higher than me, when we saw Merle ride his bike out of the garage of their house. He rode not once looking back, speeding away with a loud rumble, dead corpses trying to rush after it.

“Son of a bitch!” Daryl shouted as he rushed past me down the steps. She ran after him, crossing the yard to his porch and into the house, slowed down by the bags. When I entered he was rushing over the other rooms of his house. I dropped the bags by the front door before going looking for him.

“Fuckin’ bastard!” He was yelling when we met again on the corridor.

“He just left?!”

“You saw him leave, didn’t ya?” he answered angrily.

I raised her hands lifting my eyebrows in affront. Daryl just rushed past me mumbling “fuck” and I followed him into Merle’s bedroom.

“His stuff still here.” he noticed as I stood by the door.

“He’ll come back,” I said, arms crossed. “he wouldn’t leave you in this –”

“-the hell he wouldn’t!” Daryl raised his voice again. “Is wha’ Merle do, he leaves. Not the first time.” His voice was bitter as he strode past me. When I reached the living room, having followed him one more time, Daryl was picking up one of the bags from the floor. “Let’s just go.”

“What if he comes back?” I asked with my arms still crossed.

“Yeah, maybe in a couple of months.” Daryl snorted out.

“C’mon Daryl, we don’t know that.”

“You know nothing ‘bout Merle.” he snarled turning to me, a backpack over one shoulder. “He ain’t coming back!”

“Daryl, listen, he’s just left, you sure you don’t want to wait at least a bit?”

“Why do you care if he come back anyway?”

“I don’t, really, but I know that if we leave now you might not find your brother again.” I uncrossed my arms and took a couple of steps towards him, speaking calmly. “We don’t know what’s gonna happen, how things are out there… What if you don’t see him again? What if you don’t see him again just ‘cause you couldn’t wait a few hours?”

Daryl looked from me to the door and back again, unsure, biting the skin of his lower lip.

“It’s past three, anyway,” I kept talking, knowing he was listening now “it’ll get dark soon; I don’t think we should travel at night. If not for Merle let’s at least just wait ‘til morning ‘cause it might be safer.”

Daryl stared at me, worry creasing his forehead, still biting his lip. I’d seen him do that before, anytime he was lost in thought, or worried, or unsure. He nodded sharply once after a moment and dropped the bag to the ground again, then moved away me and deeper into the house. In the hallway leading to his bedroom, he said “You watch over, I’ll take a nap.”

He crossed the hall with heavy steps and stormed into the room and I expected the door to be slammed closed, but he didn’t act that childishly. It was more like Merle to do that, even though he was the oldest. I think he was about ten years older than Daryl, but I’ve never known for certain. And he wasn’t here now. It was weird not having Merle there, because his presence was always known. Even if he was in his bedroom sleeping we could hear him snoring loudly and speaking on his sleep. He never slept quietly, I wonder how he even got any rest. Maybe that’s why he did all the drugs, to let go of whatever it was he had in his head.

Merle was a case to be studied. I knew very little about him. I’d been living next-door to the Dixons for eighteen years, and for a while it was three of them; the father and the two sons. I barely saw the father over the years, he was always inside and when I did see him occasionally outside he was drunk and slurring racial insults at neighbors or inappropriate things at Bobby-Jo or myself, which turned into misogynistic ones when neither of us gave him any attention. He had died two or three years ago, I think, from something on his liver. Then it was just the two brothers. Merle had been gone from the house for long periods of time and back three of four times since I’d been there. At least one of them I knew he’d gone away with the army, I’m not sure if he went to a war or something, but in total Daryl was alone at the house for a few years. Their relation was… Delicate, let’s say. I always saw them together at the house and over the years even out throughout the city, so they seemed t be friends, but they fought a lot, never agreed on anything and Merle often talked him down. On those 10 days I’d been cooped up in the house with them made this quite clear. I hated to hear it, I wanted to tell Merle to just shut the fuck up, but hey, who was I go meddle? I didn’t really know them; I didn’t know what was behind all that. So when it was too much I just left and locked myself in their spare bedroom, the one I’d been using, and stayed in there for a few hours.

Maybe Daryl was right. Maybe Merle had gone for good, left us, and was not coming back. Is shouldn’t bother me. It didn’t. It didn’t bother me. I couldn’t care less. What would I be missing without Merle traveling with us tomorrow morning? Not a thing. It would be better to be just with Daryl; I could deal with Daryl. He was not bad. He even spoke gently and carefully to me, something I’d never expected, something guys didn’t usually do. I would be fine, I didn’t care.

Except that I fucking did. I groaned in anger at myself and I observed the street through the window, shaking my head and taking a pull off my cigarette. I fucking cared, I wished Merle would come back. He was still Merle, still the person who verbally harassed me for years, but on those ten days in his house something had changed and I couldn’t pinpoint it, but I knew it had. He wasn’t harassing me anymore, except for a few jokes about how I should cook for them and maybe warm up their bed at night – Daryl punched him hard on the shoulder for that one and Merle laughed, even as he held his arm because that strong punch had to hurt. He was behaving not in a good manner, but in a manner I could accept. And he had come to my rescue that night, there was that. I wished he’d come back, mostly for Daryl, but also because I knew things must be dangerous out there. There was much more than this fucking neighborhood and Chatham, and if the world was ending things were not pretty out there.

But it was settled, in the morning Daryl and I were gonna go, leave this house and hit the road to Atlanta, with or without Merle. I moved from the window to the kitchen, where I lit a single candle and tried making some food. I didn’t even know what, maybe one of the last packs of powdered soup. I took a clean pan from the drying rack, placed it under the tap and opened it. It couched and gurgled and a little brown water came out, but then just air. No water. Great… I placed the pan inside the sink, rested my hands there and lowered my head. Yeah, it really was time to go.

I blew the candle off and returned to my spot by the window. We were going to hit the road. Leave our houses. I was going to leave my house and God knows when I’d be back. Of if I’d ever be back. The house I’d been living at for 18 years and had lived good moments, but also the worst of my life. I wasn’t sorry I’d be gone. I kind of wished I’d never come back. I wished life would change so drastically I’d never even have the chance to do so. Never have to decide to come back or not.

What was this weird thing I was feeling? I wasn’t bad, but shouldn’t it be bad? Shouldn’t I be dreading whatever the fuck was happening? The world seemed to be ending in rising corpses and nothing would ever be the same, why wasn’t I that scared? I mean, of course I was scared, but in a strange way…. In a way, that good things also scare us. Does that make sense? No, it doesn’t, I know it doesn’t. But I was… And I shocked myself when I found the correct word for it, even then, standing by that window as I saw a group of three dead walking up the field at the end of the road: excited. And now I judged myself for feeling it. What kind of horrible person feels that when the world is ending and so many people are dying and suffering? I hated myself for it.

I also thought of my father. I wished he had lived to go through it with me, he was always so supportive, always trying to make me look at the good side to everything, such a gentle soul. Yeah, but thinking about it made me see he was not fit for this new life, he would never be able to kill a corpse even if it was trying to kill him. No, he was too good. All of this would break his heart. And now I was crying, thinking about dad.

“Hey, we got no water,” Daryl’s voice brought me back from where my mind was to the Dixon’s dark living room. I looked back at him, who had only now figured where I was. I had lit no candles and there was just a gap in the curtain letting a little light in. Seeing me, he continued, “jus’ a warnin’ so ya have no surprise in here”, he pointed over his shoulder in the direction of the bathroom.

“Yeah,” my voice came out a little weak and hoarse. “I tried to cook something and the water was out. We got one more can of soup… Then jus’ things I bought from home.”

I turned to the window again trying hard and failing not to think of what he meant about a surprise in there, and the room was quiet again. I guessed he’d moved away again. There were six dead people roaming the street now. Their moans and crickets and cicadas singing were the soundtracks of the night.

“You okay?”

I jumped a little. His voice was closer than I expected Daryl to be. Damn, the man could be silent if he wanted to. Hunting instincts.

“Sorry.” he smirked

“Jesus, Daryl” I turned away from him again. “I’m fine. Told ya not to ask me that.”

“Is jus’…” he shrugged. “Voice’s weird. You been cryin’?”

I crossed her arms over her chest, still looking out. He didn’t have to know that. It was personal. He wouldn’t understand what I was feeling now, not even I understood. Excited that the world was ending, only sad my daddy wasn’t here to see it? Forget it.

“No,” I told him simply.

“Alright.” he stated and moved away from me in an instant. I followed him with my eyes, turning around a little. Damn, did he sound relieved that I didn’t share! Men and their troubles with feelings and stuff.

Who am I kidding, I have trouble with feelings and stuff as well.

But a little tiny part of me was a little disappointed that he didn’t insist? Yep, it definitely was.

“Did ya eat?” he asked already from the kitchen.

“No. Not hungry, you go ahead.” I responded mechanically, trying to see him in the dark, unsuccessfully. In a minute he was back, the cold can of soup in hand, half of its content in a bowl that he handed me. I didn’t take it, arms still crossed.

“Eat.” he said firmly, motioning the bowl again.

Sighing and rolling her eyes away from him, I took the bowl and started eating. That was not one of the good soups, but whatever. We ate silently, both standing looking out.

“There’s Mr. Walker from 4th street.” Daryl said around a mouthful of soup, pointing to the dead chubby, old man wearing suspenders.

“A dead walker,” I said in a dead serious voice.

He chuckled for a moment but caught himself and lowered his head to his can of soup quickly, going silent again. I held in a smile. This rough man could be cute sometimes and wasn’t even aware of that. Full of surprises, that guy. He’d never spoken to me before in those eighteen years but then he goes to the diner to warn me and get to my house to help and if hosting me here for 10 days, like it’s all normal. I really didn’t understand.

“Why did you help me?” I asked suddenly after finishing my half soup.

“Wha’?”

“That day, with D.” I turned a little more to him after resting the empty bowl on the window sill. “You went all the way to the diner to warn me about him. Why did ya do that?”

He shrugged, not looking at me, “Was in the area.”

“Seriously, Daryl.”

He kept looking out, his expression closing up, and was silent for a moment. I just waited, staring up at him.

“Couldn’t hear him say what he’d do to ya and do nothin’.”

“Alright. Okay, you warned me, I told you I could take care of myself, but then you showed up there and helped me, and stick around and helped with the… Walker things, and then took me in here, and I’ve been here for days. It’s ‘bout all that I’m asking. Why you helping me?”

“Would you rather I didn’t?” he turned his head to me, annoyance clear in his voice.

“Oh, c’mon Daryl!” I turned away, arms up in annoyance for a moment Why couldn’t he just answer me?

“’Cause you needed, is why!” he cried, getting pissed. It was easy to piss him off. “You our neighbor twenty fuckin’ years, don’t gotta be best buddies with someone to help.”

“Well, you’re right we ain’t best buddies, but we were never even a little bit. We ain’t never talked to each other, and now I’m here practically living in your house.”

“It’s the fuckin’ Walker apocalypse out there!” Daryl yelled angrily pointing out the window. “What a fuckin’ cold-blooded motherfucker ya take me for? Ya thought I’d let the men rape and torture you, and then leave you to die alone eaten by the dead?” he snarled and took a step further, standing very close to me. I looked up at him, towering at least ten inches above me, but I didn’t flinch or blink. Somehow I knew he was not a threat. “That the kinda man ya take me for?”

I swallowed hard, my eyes locked with his, and he got a little self-aware after a second as if he realized just how close to each other we were standing now. We’d never been close like this, even living in close quarters. I could pay attention to details on him that I never registered before. His stubble was nearly blonde, or maybe it was starting to grow grey, just how freaking blue his eyes were and the mole he had just above the left corner of his lip. Was he maybe noticing these detailed in my face too? I still had a faint bluish mark from that old slap, and my eyes probably looked tired now. No self-care with my face skin for many days now, it must look dry. Damn, I was starting to get self-conscious by him looking at me like that. 

I should say something. Daryl hadn’t moved after his question, so maybe it hadn’t been rhetorical. I soundlessly cleared my throat of the lump that had formed there before saying in a very low voice, “Torture?”

Daryl nodded slowly, his jaws clenching tightly. “Yeah.”

And yet, he didn’t move.

“Guess I never thanked you.” I whispered.

That made him lower his eyes and turn again to the window, opening space between us once again. “‘S nothin’.” he mumbled tightly.

“You helped me avoid rape and torture. Guess that’s something.”

Before moving away from him, feeling too awkward and uncomfortable being so close, I touched his bicep quickly, squeezing it lightly before letting go.


	4. Day 12

_Day 12_

The world was upside down around me. My hands firmly planted to the hard, sun heated surface of the edge of the building, I looked out, the sly blue and bright where the ground should be. I was smiling, my heart racing, a sense of freedom and adrenalin making my very veins feel the raw freedom. With a hard push of my hands, I jumped, my body turning around itself three times before my feet hit the ground. I fell to a crouch and took a moment to look around. I was in a field, the building behind my back, green grass under my feet, and I was alone. With a new smile, I got up and halted to a run. After finding the perfect speed, I jumped, and kept jumping, my hands and feet hitting the ground over and over, my dreadlocks flying around in a freedom dance. At the end of the field I stopped, breathing hard, heart thudding happily, feeling like I was exactly where I belonged, like nothing could ever ruin that feeling, and I felt like jumping my way back to the building and climbing the walls to the roof again, just so I could jump down one more time. Eyes shining with excitement, I turned around.

The green grassed field behind me gone. Where it should have been trimmed and bright colored, the grass was tall, grayish, fluttering on the breeze, the same breeze that brought a smell that made my nose crinkle in disgust, my smile fade, my eyes harden. Something was moving among the tall grass, the putrid smell increasing with its approximation. After a moment I saw it; the rotting corpse of Bobbi-Jo approaching, moaning and groaning and snapping her jaws at my, rapidly approaching, though stumbling on her unsteady feet. I looked down at herself to check on weapons, anything I could use to defend myself. I had nothing; no weapons or clothes on. I could feel my dreadlocks scratching softly over my bare back, the breeze sending chills over my skin, my bare feet planted on the water pooled earth. I looked back at Bobbi, dread rising over my throat, and tried a step back, only to find my feet stuck on mud. Looking down again, I realized the thick, fetid mud was as red as blood. I fought against it, trying to pull my feet out, trying to escape; Bobbi was too close now and I knew for a fact that she was going to bite me, Bobbi would take her revenge for my stabbing her face repeatedly, she would turn me into one of them.

The heavy weight of a hand fell on my shoulder and I opened my mouth to scream, but my lips didn’t open, glued together and no sound rose from my throat. I couldn’t move, and the hand shook my shoulder once, and then again, roughly. I wanted to scream, to look back and see who was it, but my body simply didn’t respond to any command.

“Sam. Sam!”, I heard an urgent whisper behind my back. “Wake up!”

My eyes opened and my body finally moved as I jumped up on the couch, quickly registering the Dixon’s living room and Daryl standing by me, his wrist firmly held in my hand, his eyes wide in surprise.

“Didn’t mean to startle you. Ya alright?”

“Shit,” I cried as I let go of him. “Sorry.”

“’S okay.” Daryl straightened up before me.

Observing the room around them a little better, I saw the light had just started to come from outside, the pale surroundings showing the sun was still rising. I rubbed my eyes and turned to rest my feet on the floor. When I jumped awake I had crawled back to nearly over the arm of the couch.

“Fuck, Daryl, we don’t have to go so soon –”

“Merle is back.”

I looked up at him, saying nothing. He nodded, confirming what he had just said before turning to go stand by the window, our usual spot for the last few days. I jumped off the couch even as I blinked hard to make my eyes work normally again, and joined him, looking out through the curtain gap below him. Outside, I saw that Merle had just parked his bike in front of the garage and was dismounting it. He had an enormous bag hanging across his back and, from where Daryl and I stood we could see he was covered in dirt and blood.

“Shit, what the hell happened to him?”

“Walker behind.” Daryl tensed, his head right above mine.

“He’ll see it.”

Merle looked around just then, clearly looking for threats, and saw the dead walking men approaching him. With a visible sigh of annoyance, Merle grabbed an axe that had been attached to his belt, on the right side of his hip, and slammed it into its skull in one continuous, practiced motion. New blood flew around, joining the almost dried out droplets that covered his shirt and vest, and the corpse fell down.

“Fuck!” I flinched at the violence of the blow

Daryl disappeared from my side, grabbed hos crossbow from where it was resting against the wall, yanked the door open and ran out of the house, aiming at yet another walker that had been approaching from the street, and took it down with an arrow through one eye.

“The fuck you been?” he shouted angrily approaching his brother.

“Hey, hey, hey, chill out little brother!” I from the door where I stopped to look them over. “Went to Owen’s place and got my stuff back.” he said as he turned to fumble within the bag attached to the motorcycle. He took his hand out of it bringing out a plastic bag. Inside, quite a good amount of a blue rocky substance.

“Ya went for the blue sky?” Daryl shouted again. “Ya fuckin’ disappeared for this shit?”

“That’s the best meth ever cooked around, bro. Ain’t gonna face the fuckin’ apocalypse clear headed. Withdrawal‘d be a bitch on the road.”

With his huge bag dancing around on his back, Merle walked quickly inside as I opened space and Daryl shot another arrow into a walker’s forehead before running to follow him in.

“We almost left you here.” Daryl barked as he entered and banged the door closed behind him. I had returned to the window, my arms crossed, now looking at the two brothers while Merle dropped the bag on the couch. I didn’t say it, but I was thinking how all the noise would attract even more dead bodies to the surroundings of the house.

“Well, ya didn’t, did ya?” Merle kept smiling and looked at me. “Hey, ya still here! Corpse didn’t get ya yet?”

“Bite me.” I said moving across the living room and into the kitchen.

“Hey, you know wha’?” he asked following me with his eyes and laughed as he zipped the bag open. “One day I might!”

“What you got there?” Daryl asked, his voice still angry, but eyeing the big bag as he approached the couch it had been dropped on.

“Been to Wildcat!” Merle announced happily as he took a smaller bag from inside the big one and then threw it at Daryl. He caught it in the air with his left hand. “Store was open, all fucked up, but I found those.”

Daryl dropped the crossbow to the ground, resting against the coffee table, and opened the pack to find it filled with at least fifty new arrows and few new strings for the crossbow. Daryl looked dumbfounded at Merle, who was not paying attention to him anymore. Instead, he fumbled over the things inside.

“Look at that, fuckin’ Christmas at the Dixon’s!”

He turned the bag upside down and tens of objects fell from it, filling the couch and falling to the floor with thuds. Finishing a bottle of water that had been already halfway empty and leaving it on the sink, I returned and joined Merle by the couch, looking down at the things.

“Where’d ya get it all?” I asked leaning down to pick up a small, compact set of camping pans.

“Ya know that expensive, full of shit store on E Broughton?”

“Sure.” I dropped the pans and reached for a flashlight.

“Got all kindsa stuff for the road. Got tents, sleeping bags, a little propane stove an’ all.”

Daryl continued in a real bad mood for a long time, but didn’t say anything else other than grunting agreements. I secretly admired Merle for having thought about all of that, since I hadn’t. In reality, I hadn’t imagined that going to stores to pick up things was an actual option, and now I felt stupid for not considering loot. It was such an obvious solution.

“‘S getting late, we should go.” I stated quietly as I started sorting things to put back into Merle’s bag.

“Yeah, all we gotta do now is stuff all them heavy bags on the bike, three of us hop on it, and we’ll be on our merry way.” Merle joked aloud, but I could hear some seriousness on his voice. He was at the window, looking out and pointing at the bike as he spoke.

“Fuck!” Daryl said and joined him. “How’d we not think of that?”

“Didn’t you use to have a truck?” I asked them.

“Yeah, it’s at the garage now with a fucked up carburetor.” Daryl told me, not turning from the window. “Don’t think them mechanics’ workin’ on it now.”

My heart sank. If there was only the bike, and it belonged to Merle, I realized with a weird, foreign pang in my chest that it was obvious he and Daryl would be going away on it. There was no space for me. For a moment I felt an incredible sadness take over, an even permitted myself to wonder for a moment what the hell I was going to do without those two in my life. The thought scared me more than the dream I’d been awaken from no more than one hour ago. Barely two weeks before these men were my neighbors, people who I never talked to, and who were a terror for me. Merle with his hurting comments, Daryl with his indifference, their friends with their raw violence. I had always avoided them like the devil, and now I felt something close to emptiness at the thought they’d be leaving me behind; at the thought that I, in fact, did not belong there.

As the two brothers discussed something by the window, I refused to even try o listen to it. Quietly I moved to where my bags rested against a wall and started picking them up, readying myself to depart alone, trying hard to ignore the tightness on my throat.

“The fuck ya doin’?”

I turned to see Merle and Daryl looking at me, Merle having asked that, frowning. I just looked at them for a second before returning to my task. “I’m going.” I told them simply.

“No ya not,” Daryl snorted.

“Course I am!” I forced the fucking _feelings_ behind a wall of anger. “Is just obvious, right? Three people, one bike, just do the math.”

“How ya plannin’ to take the road?” Merle crossed his arms, defying me. “Nice ass ‘n green eyes ain’t gonna help ya now, sugar.”

“Not your problem anymore.” I mumbled quietly picking up the second bag, hating that he was actually right. “Thanks for having me; I’ll take care of myself now.”

I heard Daryl breath out loudly, clearly annoyed, and move from the window. I didn’t look at him anymore, just adjusted the two bags on me the best I could, brow furred at the thought of how I’d be able to walk or do anything else while carrying all that weight.

“Ya jus’ talking shit now, Sammy,” Merle grinned.

“Don’t call me that.” God, I hated this stupid nickname. I turned to face the man and stopped him as he opened his smirking mouth to say more. “Look, I don’t even know how I ended up here in your house in the first place. Again, thanks for having me here, but –”

“Fuckin’ hell, girly, just shut the fuck up!” Merle raised his voice.

“The fuck did ya say to me?” now he got me angry for real, who the fuck did he think he was tell me to shut up? I took angry steps towards him, looking up. He was even taller than Daryl.

“We’ll find a fuckin’ way, Sammy-Sammy!” he grinned even more, finding great fun in my anger.

“I told ya to not –”

“Would ya girls just shut up?” Daryl shouted from the door and both Merle and I looked at him. “Jus’ stay here, I’ll be back.”

With that, he opened the door, crossbow in hand, and left the house, banging the door closed at his back.

“Fuck!” I bellowed. “You fuckin’ Dixons have got to stop fuckin leaving like that!”

Merle still smirked but he was a bit astonished by his brother sudden departure as well. We exchanged a look and I walked away from him. I’d never been alone with Merle before, even being in his house or all those days.

“Where ya goin’, chickabiddy?” Merle cooed falling to the couch as I walked along the hallway.

“Away from you.”

* * *

“I can see four from here.”

“We can take four,” Merle said more quietly than I had ever heard him speak. I moved from the window holding up the axe Merle had brought with him from his scavenging trip. He looked at it and grinned. “Like the axe huh, muffin?”

“Yeah, pretty bad-ass. Let’s see how I handle it.”

I opened the door and peaked outside before stepping out, Merle close behind me. We were both geared with two guns each, plus knives, the axe and a crowbar. We’d been waiting for over two hours, the sun was already higher in the sky than what I had wished it to be by the time we left the house, and Daryl was still not back. I had decided Merle and I should go look for him because we were wasting time, but I was actually terrified that something had happened to him, alone out there. Merle had pretended to agree with me, but I know he also dreaded the thought that his brother could be one of the corpses around now.

The four walkers saw us coming and charged at us. I tested the axe in one of their skulls; it crashed into it easily, even though the axe was heavy, and I had to step on his forehead to force the axe out, but other than that I thought it was pretty neat. I could get used to that. Now sideways, I did the same to the second one, and felt an odd satisfaction as it crumpled to the ground. Damn, odd satisfaction.

I looked over at Merle as I took the axe off, and he was just knocking the last one of them to the ground with the crowbar. He grinned at me seeing my done job at my share of two corpses.

“Let’s go.” I didn’t smile back, even though I understood his. I was too worried.

We moved with quick steps to the middle of the street and looked around. Two more walkers were on the end of the street to our left, but far enough not to be a problem now, and one more on the corner, a few yards away. We started moving to our right, towards the corner with the main street, but the sound of a motor made us stop. We both reached for the guns and pointed it in the direction of the corner, waiting to see what it was. A moment later an old, noisy blue truck turned the corner and kept moving towards us. The sun reflected on the windshield, protecting the driver from being seen, forcing Merle and I to maintain our guns pointed and ready. When the truck got closer, the reflection gave way to show it was Daryl driving.

I breathed out loudly lowering the gun and he approached with the truck, slowing down as he passed by us.

“Let’s load it and get the fuck outta here.” he told us, his head out of the window, ignoring the fact that we had been pointing guns at him until seconds ago. He kept on to the house, where he parked with the back of it close to the bike.

I ran to the house as I holstered the gun again after dropping the axe to the yellowing grass and started bringing all the bags out, pilling them down on the side of the truck.

“Where did ya get it?” I asked Daryl as Merle fumbled with the bike and he was taking the arrows from the heads of the walkers he had shot hours ago.

“Mr. Walker’s garage. Was locked, had to break in and kill his brother inside. Half his face was missin’.”

As I reentered the house and returned with the last of the bags, I saw the them lift the front of the bike to the back of the truck, struggling with its weight.

“Walkers.” I told them when I saw two more approach and once again took the axe from the ground.

“That what ya callin’ ‘em now?” Merle asked as he hopped up to the back of the truck.

“You got ‘em?” Daryl asked ignoring the question.

“I got ‘em, keep up.” I said rushing over to the walkers, not waiting for them to get to me. I finished one quickly with the axe, but as I forced it out of its skull, the other one approached from my left. I let go of the axe but had no time to reach for other weapon, taking on my only choice. I made a quick turnaround herself, left leg raising up strongly with my motion to hit the walker straight in the face. There was a loud noise of bone breaking before it crumpled heavily to the floor but didn’t stop moving. I turned quickly to the axe, stepped on the walker’s head and yanked it out, moving it down to the other in one fluid motion. I was breathing heavily as I looked down at the two corpses and then back at the Dixon’s, who had stopped moving the bike up and were staring openly at me.

“Shit, didn’t know ya can do that!” Merle laughed.

I didn’t respond. Instead of giving them attention, I ran quickly towards Daryl. His eyes widened as he saw a tattooed woman covered in blood with the axe raised running towards him, features hardened.

“Duck!” I shouted and he didn’t even think before doing so. He crouched down in time to see me jump and fly above him, one leg stretched out to knock a walker down, hitting it in the chest. I had barely landed to the ground when I shoved the axe into its skull.

I looked back at Daryl, chest rising and falling strongly. “They’re fuckin’ loud, how didn’t ya hear it?” I barked angrily. We couldn’t afford that kind is recklessness now.

He didn’t answer, stunned, and I walked away and started looking around. Merle and Daryl restarted lifting the bike and I took guard. When it was up, Merle took care of chaining it to the bed of the truck as Daryl lifted the bags into it, fitting them on the little space there was around the bike.

“Fuck! We’re too loud, they’re comin’!” I told them when walkers started to appear from the space between my house and theirs, and another few from the street.

Merle repeated my choice of cursing as he jumped out of the truck, crowbar again in hand. He and Daryl moved close to me, weapons ready. More walkers started appearing from the street, the back of the house, the neighbor’s lawns, even from inside my own house, and in instants were surrounding us. I thought dead people were supposed to be slow, shouldn’t they be? We dealt the closer that were closer, but the noise seemed to be attracting even more.

“We gotta move!”, Merle shouted.

We started moving closer to the car, back to back forming a misshaped circle, Daryl and I killing the corpses that were standing in between and Merle stopping others from approaching. Daryl opened the truck passenger door, its movement sending a walker stumbling backwards.

“Get in!” he turned to me, grabbing my arm strongly and all but shoving me inside like I was Raggedy Ann. “Merle, come on!” he shouted at his brother, who was laughing hysterically and taking one of his guns out of the holster. Merle shot one walker straight in the middle of its forehead and aimed to the next one, and then the next.

“Stop fuckin’ around!” I shouted from the inside as I turned the key to start the truck. A walker was banging its fists on the window by my side, some sort of goo plastering the glass. “Let’s go!”

Merle turned and Daryl climbed into de truck just before him. Merle slammed the door shut just as I started moving away from the garage entrance.

“Shit, ya fuckin’ insane!” Daryl said, chest having. He had seen walkers way too close to his brother.

“Wasting bullets!” was all I could say of all the things I was thinking, my voice shriek denouncing how nervous I was.

“We own them!” Merle shouted, laughing as opened the window by his side. “We fuckin’ own ‘em!” he put his head and arm outside as I drove away. “Adios, motherfuckers! Hasta la vista, fuckin’ 7th street! Hope I never see ya again!”

I shook my head, feeling like yelling some more at him, but refrained. Instead, I surprised myself by barking a full, loud guffaw, his words warming something inside me. Merle looked at me, still laughing, leaving Daryl in the between us looking dumbfounded from side to side. We laughed even more, looking at each other, and I felt an amazing, odd satisfaction as I filled my lungs with air that did not smell good at all, but felt tastier than ever, and, looking to the street that stretched before us, shouted “Fuck you, Garden City!”

* * *

A short 32 miles trip should have taken them no more than forty minutes to cover, but the abandoned cars on traffic at the entrances of towns on US 80 made our progress much slower. I had to drive out of the road for more than five miles, and when we reached the town of Eden I had to enter the village and drive by a herd of about twenty walkers, slowly, to only then return to the road. It was past lunch time when we decided to stop. There was a gas station on the entrance of Stilson that was apparently safe, with no walkers in sight.

“Less than a quarter of tank.” I told them as I moved the stick to park.

The place was abandoned. There were cars around, a big sign informing there was no gas, and no people around, living or dead. We hopped out of the car and spread out to look for supplies. Merle and Daryl took the time to look for fuel in the tanks of abandoned cars while I went through them to see if I could find something useful. I did find a few pills inside glove compartments, abandoned cans of soda, a bag of Doritos. In the trunk of one of the cars, a travelling bag with clothes, shoes and toiletries.

After carrying a new bag filled with the findings to the truck, I checked that Daryl and Merle were still in their search for gas, so I stood on the edge of the road, facing a big empty field, and lit up a cigarette. It was all still surreal. Like a movie. Being here, in the middle of the road, which was completely deserted, getting gas for the truck with the Dixons while the world had gone to shit.

“Hey” Daryl was approaching. He didn’t ask, but I handed him the pack of Morleys. “Got somethin’ good?”

“Yeah, whole new bag of stuff.”

Daryl lit his cigarette and pulled, now standing beside me and also looking at the field and road. He was silent for a moment until he questioned “What d’ya think we gonna find in Atlanta?”

“Honest?”

“Yeah.”

“Nothin’.”

“What?” he looked surprised at me.

I’d been thinking about that for a while now. I knew if there was something we had to try, it was going to Atlanta. First thing, I thought, because I really didn’t want to believe we’d find help there. If there was an active place, they’d still be broadcasting something, telling people there was a shelter, that they could still do there, but the radios were silent for days now.

‘“Been almost two weeks since day one. We heard ‘bout the shelter on the radio almost a week ago. The whole population of fuckin’ Georgia heard it. No room for so many.”

“So why we goin’ there?”

“’Cause I ain’t sure, I just guess. Gotta try, don’t we?”

I looked at him, who stared right back and didn’t answer, worry creasing his forehead. Finally he pulled on his cigarette again and looked away, head moving slowly up and down in a nod.

“Yeah, got nothin’ else to do anyway. But hey, don’t say that to Merle. He’ll get pissed and leave again.”

“’Course. Just don’t know what to do it turns out I’m right.”

“We’ll figure.” he said and we went silent again for a minute. “Think we should check in there,” Daryl said pointing over his shoulder with his thumb, “may find some food.”

“Sure.” I agreed and looked towards the diner, only to see a walker stumbling towards the us. “Oh, fuck, can’t ya jus’ gimme a break?”

Daryl looked to the same direction and snorted a quick laugh before turning again to me. “Here, hold this,” he handed me his half cigarette. “Don’t smoke it.” he pointed a finger after I took it. Daryl swung the crossbow from his back, held it up and shot the corpse without much of a thought. I gave him the cig back when he turned to me again, a small smirk on his lips. I smiled at him a little and we finished smoking in silence. I didn’t want to keep smiling like a loon at him or he’d know I thought he looked hot just then, with his confidence and his arms tensioning with the heavy crossbow. So I just smoked quietly.

As we turned towards the diner, butts of our smokes thrown on the road, we saw Merle coming back from the parking lot behind it.

“Hey! Whatcha pussies doing standing there? Got nothin’ else to do? I ain’t gonna do all the work alone!”

“We got the gas already.” Daryl said when we met halfway. “Jus’ gotta fill the tank.”

“Ya coming on to her already little brother?”, Merle asked aloud and I rolled my eyes, walking further from them towards the diner. “Think ya gonna get ya nice piece of ass now?”

“Shut up, Merle!” I heard Daryl shout and turned to them.

“Hey, cut it out!” I ordered. “We got things to do.”

“Yeah, _you_ got things to do.” Merle turned away from Daryl, moving to me. “Ya not gonna get off the hard work ‘cause ya girl. Little brother and I got all the gas for the tank, what the fuck did ya do? Stood there smokin’ like a smokin’ princess?”

“I got us fuckin’ supplies, not that I owe ya any explanation. And back the fuck off!”, I shouted, a hand extended between us as he got too close for comfort.

He laughed looking down at me, “Nervous, love? Don’t want no men close to ya personal space? Or ya jus’ don’t like no man at all?”

“She said back off,” Daryl said approaching and then forcefully shoved Merle away from me, “get the fuck away!”

“The fuck is wrong with you, brother?” Merle asked him, both now staring at each other. “The girl can look after herself, ain’t that what she always sayin’?”

“I don’t give it a fuck; you stay away from her!”

Fuck, I’d seem them start sudden fights like that before, many times at the house, but was it now about _me_? I didn’t wanna hear it. I had already walked away from them. It was enough that the world was ending and I had no home or any knowledge of what was going on, I didn’t want to have to deal with the Dixons fights. They were big boys; let them solve their own problems. One thing I had learned in those two weeks was that, when from the outside I had believed they were close, friends, and liked the same things, now from up close I was sure they had problems, deeper than I could imagine. It was a love-hate relationship that was only theirs. And it was increasingly clear to me how they were not similar. I mean, at all.

I walked to the diner door, peeking inside, still listening to their raised voices but not making out what they were saying. Just as I slowly pushed the door open they joined me quietly, but I could practically feel Daryl seething. I said nothing, trying to convince myself it was their problem and I shouldn’t meddle. None of us spoke, in fact, just raised our weapons as we entered. It was a small place so it didn’t take long to check it was completely empty.

“Been looted already.” Merle spoke looking around at the useless things thrown on the floor.

“We should see if there’s toilet paper in the restrooms.” I told either one of them as I crouched down to pick up an abandoned purse from the floor. Opening it, I found a wallet with money in it, but left it there; there was no use for money now. On the driver’s license, I saw the name of its owner. “Well, dear Abby, if you excuse me, I’m gonna go through your stuff.”

There was a plastic bag with three Mars bars, a half a tic-tac pack, a pen, an uncharged cell phone, a very ugly pink lipstick and, inside another pocket of the purse, a box of tampons. I stared at them for a moment, making a mental note to think about what it reminded me later, my mind quickly shutting it down, and took the box along with the mars bars. Merle came out of the restroom carrying a big roll of toilet paper and a pack of baby wipes and met Daryl by the cashier, from where he was leaving with a package containing about twenty lighters. Seeing there was nothing else that could be useful in there, we decided it was time to fill the tank and hit the road. I was already at the driver’s seat when they got to the car, throwing things on the truck.

“Who made ya the official driver in this trip?” Merle said as he sat by my side and Daryl climbed in after him.

“I did.” I told him half mindedly while fumbling with the radio dial. “Would ya try it again?”

“’S no use, but whatever.”

We’d been on the road again for less than five minutes when the radio finally tuned into something understandable. I jumped a little and we all went very silent as Merle found the best position, and then just listened.

“Reports from the state of New York, New Hempshire and Maine recently informed their main cities to have gone down. Manhattan had to be bombed in a try to contain the spread of the parasite but –” the transmission got lost for a moment and then returned.

“We recently lost contact with California. Oregon had been also lost on our last communication –”

“May God help us all –”

“It’s a national crisis, the White House hasn’t made any kind of announcement in almost a week –”

“We are not even sure if this all is really only happening in America. We heard reports about Mexico, but not too complete inf –”

“We heard hours ago that Denver was bombed, just like they did Manhattan, and other main cities in Colo –”

“Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive our sins –”

Daryl leaned over and roughly turned off the radio. For a long time, what could have been the best part of an hour, the only sound we heard was the heavy motor of the truck.

“Down from coast to coast.” Merle broke the silence in a low, grave voice. “Why’d it be different in Atlanta?”

“You got any other idea?” I asked in the same low voice.

He thought for a long moment. I looked at him and then at Daryl, who was looking out at the road, biting the inside of his lower lip.

“The coast, maybe?” I suggested. “There might be food…”

“Yeah. Maybe.” Daryl agreed after a moment. “We can do that.”

“Yeah.” I whispered as Merle only nodded. “Yeah, I guess. But, just… We gotta get to Atlanta first. Take a look. At least we’ll be sure if it went down.” I got no answer, they both only nodded.

“Okay.” I affirmed mostly to myself.

“There’s Statesboro.” Daryl said as we approached the city.

“Shit, look at that place…” Merle said leaning forward. “All gone too.”

“Hard to believe there’s no one here,” I wondered. “Or anywhere. I mean, where _is_ everybody?”

“If they had somethin’ to escape,” Daryl started, bitterly, “then we shouldn’t be here neither.”

“What if there’s people hiding? People needing help, and there’s no one to help them? I don’t see any authority, I mean, fire department, police, ambulance…”

“Don’t think there is any of that no more”, Daryl stated. “Probably escaped as well.”

“What if –” I kept on but paused. “Fuck, look at that,” I pointed at a dead body on the road, a vulture sitting on its chest, feasting on the flesh of its stomach.

“What if what?” Merle asked, ignoring it.

“What if we find people who need help? What do we do?”

“Depends on the kinda help.” Daryl said. “Only so much we could do.”

“We ain’t helping no one.” Merle had his voice normal again. “Got no space in the truck and I ain’t sharing our things. Ya expect people around to help ya if ya need it? Bullshit. People will only look after their own asses.”

“Shit, of course nobody would help _you_ , Merle.” I emphasized the _you_ , making Merle and Daryl look at me. “You’re a fuckin’ asshole.” I finished and heard Daryl snort a laugh. I looked at him for a moment and returned to Merle. “Why would anyone help you?”

“Well, you would help me, love!” Merle smiled.

“Yeah, maybe I’m an asshole too.”

In downtown Statesboro, I made a turn to the left taking South Main St while telling them “We’ll take S Main straight down to 301 and from there take 16 straight to Atlanta.”

“Ya know this place?” Daryl asked looking at me past his brother.

“Yeah. Stayed here more often than back home for a while. A freakin’ square close to Wall Mart.”

Merle snorted a loud laugh, “Sounds like a junkie spot to me.”

I didn’t look at the two men by my side, internally slapping myself in the face for mentioning it. They didn’t speak either and even without looking at them I could feel they were both staring, maybe waiting for me to correct Merle, but I didn’t. Instead, I just mumbled “Yeah…” and remained quiet for a very long time.

We decided not to stop in Macon as well, instead just passed by it. The difference, this time, was that we saw people. There was a group looting a supermarket, two men breaking the window of a car to steal it, a man nailing wooden planks to the window of a store, but more than anything else, we saw cars moving towards the road. Not just a few. A woman shot a walker in the head right in the middle of the street before running away. Our windows were closed and door locked as I sped up. Our stuff was in the back, if I drove too slow people could try to get to it. If it didn’t feel safe, it probably wasn’t.

The sun had already started to go down and give way to the night when we left the freeway, driving on the side road instead, slowly enough to look for a place to stay that night. We drove by a large grassy lawn close to Forsyth and could see a few small wooden camping cabins among sparse trees. It was the entrance of a park and seemed to be voided of any life. We drove by and returned a couple of times, hoping the noise of the truck would attract any walkers around so we’d know what we’d have to deal with. As none appeared, I drove the truck over the grass, very slowly, until stopping between the two first little cabins. Nobody said a word for a while as we looked around and, silently, climbed off the car.

The cabins were disposed in two rows that faced each other and were, now we could see, five on each row, tiny, barely existent porches in front of them. Everything was silent as we exchanged looks. Daryl gestured Merle to go check on the back of the left row of cabins and to me to check the middle space between them. We nodded and moved to our specific spots as Daryl went to the back of the row on our right.

Reaching the space between the second and third cabins, I saw a walker between the one on the right, close to where Daryl had also just seen it. The walker seemed dormant, but looked big and strong, probably recently turned, I gathered. Across from it, Daryl and I exchanged a look just as the walker turned its head to Daryl, who was much closer to him, and growled. I immediately brought my fingers to my lips and let out a sharp, loud whistle. Without pausing, the walker turned, his dead, yellowed eyes focusing on me. He turned and gave his back to Daryl, who took no time thinking before rushing over to it. He grabbed his hair and pulled the head back, his knife being stabbed into the eye socket to the hilt. He pulled the knife out before letting the body fall to the ground. After eyeing it for another moment, he looked up to see me still there. He nodded, head down but eyes on me, and we both moved along.

When we met in the end of the rows of cabins, we saw the neck of woods descended slightly into the park and, a few yards away, a group of four walkers feasting on a dead dear. Merle raised the rifle he had been carrying and took aim, silently. I was by his side and reached out to touch on the barrel close to his hand, and tugged it down. Merle looked at me, a mixture of a question and irritation in his eyes. I answered by bringing a finger over my lips, asking for silence. I don’t know how he hadn’t get yet that noise attracts walkers. A frown in his forehead, he lowered the rifle in time to see the first arrow silently fly out of his brother’s crossbow, hitting the first of the four walkers square in the back of the head. The other three didn’t seem no notice anything was wrong, giving time for Daryl to reload his weapon and shoot again. When the second walker fell to the ground, the other two noticed our presence. One of them kept eating, to engross on the fresh meat in front of him to desire a new hunt. The other, a female wearing torn pant suits, got up and made its way up the ground of the forest towards us.

“Got it.” Merle said as he extended the rifle to me and I took it without question. He unsheathed one of his knives and stepped towards it as Daryl took aim at the last one. Both walkers were gone at the same moment.

“Think it’s clear,” I told them as Daryl went to retrieve back his arrows and Merle cleaned the knife on the fabric of the walker’s clothes. “Gotta check inside the cabins now. I’m thinking we use two of ‘em, two of us sleep and one take guard.” I turned to lead them back when they were ready to go. “This place seems too good, someone else’s definitely gonna wanna be here.”

The inside of the cabins was clear. We checked all of them through the windows, since all the doors were tightly locked, and chose the two first ones to sleep in. We successfully broke in to find the space was even smaller than we’d thought; single bed, a small dresser, and nothing else. It was simply perfect for our first night on the road.


	5. Day 13

_Day 13_

The knock had been so faint, so quick that I wasn’t sure if it had actually happened, or if she had simply imagined it. Frowning, I peered out from under one eye at the darkness that threatened to engulf me entirely, the complete and utter silence only broken by the singing of hidden crickets. Sure of what I heard, I remained unmoving, my mind on overdrive as I fought to place myself, to remember what had happened and where I was. I hadn’t slept that deeply in days. Daring a settling breath, my head snapped to the knock as it repeated itself, the sound now followed by a haunting creak as the door fell open ever so slowly. Holding the breath I had taken, I lifted my head from the thin pillow, my hand tightening around the handle of the hunting knife that had never left my side. Letting my eyes adjust to the weak, bluish light that filtered through the gap in the door courteously of the moon, I recognized the head that peaked inside as Daryl, his figure cautious, ready.

“Daryl?” I whispered into the darkness of the surrounding room, hand loosening from the tight grip and I allowed herself to breath once again, unsure if he could see that I had woken.

“Hey,” he all but breathed moments later, keeping his almost shielded position.

“Is it my turn to watch already?” I looked around trying to find the illuminated numbers of an alarm clock that wasn’t there, purely out of habit.

“Yeah, almost,” his silhouette nodded, an apology playing at his tone as he pushed the door open further.

Sighing, I slid the worn blanket to the side of my still very tired body to sit up and rub my eyes before searching blindly for my boots. “Everything alright out there?”

"Yeah, jus' few cars passing on the road, none stopped." his voice was still quiet.

"'Kay, come in, you need to sleep."

"I'm alright."

I looked up at him as I tied the shoelaces. "What ya mean? You gotta rest."

"I'll nap in the truck later."

"So why'd you wake me up? Where's Merle?"

"Asleep. Uh, sorry, shouda let you sleep..." he reached for the door to close it again, but I got up from the bed quickly and held it open.

"Now I'm up anyway. Did you wanna say something?"

"Just... Knew ya'd be all bitchin' if I didn't wake ya when ya told me to." he said, voice returning to normal as he turned around and walked away.

"Yeah, you right I'd be bitching, but that's 'cause ya need to sleep. Why else would I wanna be up in the middle of the night?" I followed him, securing my knife in the sheath around my waistband.

He didn't answer until he reached the picnic tables in the middle of the grassy area in the entrance of the park.

"Found pears." he broke the short silence and pointed to the table. Looking down, I saw about a dozen pears lying there any my annoyance quickly dissipated. My mouth watered and I reached for one of them without even thinking.

"Did ya eat?" I asked him right before biting down on the fruit.

"Yeah." Daryl mumbled in response, looking at me as I closed her eyes and moaned throatily. The pears felt like they’d been dipped in sugar, they were so sweet and juicy. As I swallowed, I opened my eyes to look at him, smiling. He quickly looked away and down at his shoes.

"This is amazing, thank you," and I bit again. "That why ya woke me up?"

"Nah," he said with a dismissive wave of a hand. "Told ya why."

"Right, so I wouldn't be bitching later." I was still smiling and Daryl didn't look at me. "So ya just shove me food so I'll be in a good mood." I paused and he looked at me, uncertain of how my mood really was. It hadn’t been good for a long time, probably since this all started. He saw me smirking at him, though, as I completed "Good one."

He cleared his throat and turned away from me, looking around as he kept his watching duty. “Ya go back to sleep, couple more hours until dawn.”

I didn’t answer. I was awake now anyway, and I wanted to eat more fruit. I hopped up on the table and sat by the pile of pears, feet resting on the bench, and kept eating. Daryl turned around to see me there but didn’t say anything. For the rest of the night, we kept watch together and silently. Daryl only moved far from her to go relieve himself behind one of the empty cabins, and returned quickly. I’d have to that soon too. I’d gone earlier before going to sleep and I just hated peeing in the woods! It always splattered my books and I’m sure some got on my jeans, it’s terrible. I’m gonna miss having toilets and running water in this freaking apocalypse.

When the morning came, I excused myself to go do just _that_ and found Merle awake when I got back. He was mumbling about how small for his size and how hard the bed had been, about how hungry he was. Sam told him to eat pears but he laughed saying that fruit for breakfast was for pussies. He retrieved the can bag from the truck and chose a few, ignoring my judgmental expression when I saw his choice.

“Not eating this shit, I’ll stick to the pears,” I told him as I sat on the table once again.

“Fuckin’ fruit ain’t gonna take ya far, Sammy.” Merle told me and placed a can roughly by my side. I held myself not to bitch at him about the name. “We all gotta eat protein, know what I mean?”

“Yeah, protein is one thing but,”, I took the can and checked the label “this? Really?”

Daryl joined his brother on insisting that I ate and I just gave in to get them to shut up. Daryl had opened the cans with his hunting knife and, defeated, I dig on one.

“I gotta tell ya, never thought I’d eat cold pork brains for breakfast,” I said after minutes, eating the disgusting-tasting thing. “out of a can.”

Really, it was terrible. The texture made me shudder.

“Not only pork brains,” Daryl said with his mouthful, sitting by my side at the edge of the picnic table. “Pork brains with milk gravy.”

“Geez, I don’t think imma need to eat again in days.”

A characteristic groan interrupted the silence that stretched as we ate, sitting side by side on top of the table. We looked up to see a walker appear from around a cabin, attracted by our voices. Merle got up leaving his can on the table, grabbed a rusty machete he had found behind the cabins the evening before and smashed it into the walker’s head. It got split in two almost perfect halves, brain matter squishing all over.

I had been chewing on pork brains for a moment. The connection between both things did not go unnoticed by my stomach.

“Oh shit.” Was all I said when getting up and running to the side of the cabin. My breakfast was gone in a moment, pears and pork, and Daryl was by my side, but not too close.

“Hey, you okay?” he asked worried.

“Peachy!”, I snapped, still coughing the last of it “Pork brains, walker brains… Ya know”.

“Here,” he approached her carefully as I swiped my mouth with the back of my hand and handed me a bottle of water. He stayed close as I washed her mouth twice and then sipped on the water.

We returned to the table where Merle was already sitting again, eating his brains eagerly.

“Hey, if ya gonna be a pussy about gore –”

“Shut up, Merle.” I barked as I sat down. “Can we please not talk about that?”

“Sure.” Daryl agreed sitting by my side and taking a spoon to eat again. “Hey, Sam, wanna eat again?”

As I looked at him to answer that there was absolutely no way I would ever eat that crap again in my life even if it was the last canned food on Earth, Daryl opened his mouth, filled with chewed pork brains, and made a walker noise. Merle guffawed aloud and I yelled at Daryl, pushing him away from me strongly. He fell on his feet from the table, swallowing and laughing.

It _was_ funny though.

“Fuck, get away from me, you’re disgusting!” I got up, but all the while holding my laughter. My stomach did complain quite a lot about the sight, though. I moved to the other picnic table and sat on top of it, sipping slowly on my water and breathing deeply, willing the nausea away. In a few minutes the Dixons finished eating, checked on the cabins again and put our things back the bed of the truck before approaching me again.

“Ready to go?” Daryl asked.

“Yeah, I guess. Shouldn’t have eaten that. I didn’t even eat breakfast often back in real life.”

“This is real life, love,” Merle told me. “Gotta get used to eat whatever ya can find. No markets no more.”

“We don’t even know how long this whatever-this-is gonna last. Maybe things will get back to normal… Someday.”

“Yeah, and ya really believe that?” Daryl asked.

“No, I don’t,” I admitted with a little smile.

“Hey, talkin’ ‘bout real life, d’ya want me to teach ya how to shoot?” Merle asked and sat by my side once again. “Can get handy these days.”

“I don’t need to learn it.”

“Nah, I think ya do.” Merle disagreed. “Knife and ax will only save you ass to some point. Gonna get to shoot ’em motherfuckers eventually.”

“Too noisy.” I pointed out and took a sip of water. “Ya kill one with a shot and attract ten more.”

“Can’t think like that in an emergency,” Daryl said standing in front of me, raising one leg to rest on the bench under us. “If ya need to save your life, or someone’s who’s with ya, gonna have to shoot.”

“Hm… Yeah, you right.” I said after thinking for a moment. “But I still tell ya, I don’t need to _learn_ it.”

“Shit, gotta be so stubborn, love?”

“I said” I spoke louder to cut him off “I don’t need to learn it. I can already shoot.”

Merle, with an impressed expression and a smirk, nodded and looked at Daryl. Yes, I did learn how to shoot. Took classes and all. The reason for that was a conversation for some other time.

“Alright,” Daryl said. “What about that kicking jumping thing you did back at the house?”

“Yeah, I can do that too. I learned self-defense years ago, included shooting in that. I practice sports on the weekends.”

“So ya an athlete?” Merle asked, almost laughing.

“So much you two don’t know about me.” I shook her head and laughed a little at them.

“Yeah, but we talkin’ ‘bout things useful on the fuckin’ apocalypse. I don’t think playing volleyball or somethin’ will help a lot.” Merle mocked.

“Who said anything ‘bout _volleyball_? I do free running, and that, dude, is something useful in the fuckin’ apocalypse.”

I had to explain to them what this sport was and what I could do, but refused to show anything to them now. We had to hit the road again, and I was still feeling ill. As we entered the truck again, Merle driving this time and I by the opposite window, Daryl deviated the topic.

“You guys aware that it’s not jus’ walkers we’ll be up against, huh?”

“What you mean?”, I turned my head from the window to look at him.

“It’s people. No law, no health and food no more. People gonna turn against the other.”

“Ya right, brother.” Merle nodded as we entered the main road again. “Men can be evil in normal life, guess how’ll be now. We’re up for some real shit.”

“Fuck.” I cursed really low, looking out the window, the wind making me feel a little better. “Did think of that, just didn’t wanna… I don’t know.”

“Yep. With time I’m not sure if we gotta worry more about walkers or breathers,’ Daryl concluded, creating a tense silence on the cab of the truck.

* * *

Fifteen minutes later found us parked on the side of the road again, right under the High Falls Road sign. I had jumped over the guardrail and was wrenching by the tree line. The number of cars passing by the road was much bigger now, all with visibly enormous luggage. Merle stood up on the bed of the truck, a gun in hand, guarding it, seeing people stare at the car as they passed, but nobody dared to stop. Daryl was standing in the grass close to me, his crossbow in hand, guarding my back. I had been trying to control my nausea since the car started moving again, breathing slowly, feeling the wind, thinking of something else, but it was all for nothing. There was a moment I all but screeched for Merle to stop, startling them both, and he did quickly. I still had time to run before succumbing to the nausea. When I fell on my knees after wrenching violently for minutes, Daryl called on Merle.

“We stopping for today,” Daryl announced. “We’ll take this road here and go to the park, find a place.”

“No!” I forced myself to stand up. “We’re close to Atlanta now and ‘s too early, we gotta go –”

“None of that, ya sick and got no opinion now”, Daryl cut me off. “Ya know this place, Merle?”

“Yeah. Good hunting spot, bunch o’ fancy-ass houses around. We can get’er some real food.”

“We can’t stop a whole day!” I protested as I made my way back to the side of the truck, Daryl following close.

“Jus’ shut up, love”, Merle called from the top of the car, turning to look at me, “Damn, girl, yer green! Hey, don’t feel bad ‘bout it,” he said seeing I was angry at the situation. “Girls just ain’t prepared for that kinda thang but don’ worry, we’ll find ya a suited job.”

I was already approaching the car by the passenger door. “What’s this got to with me bein’ a girl? Guys can get food poisoning too, you might too.”

“Nah, not me”, Merle jumped from the roof to the floor, his heavy body almost stumbling to the ground but gaining his balance. “I’m a tough sumbitch, never get sick.”

“Can only imagine you sick”, I entered the cab and sat down as Daryl climbed in next to me. “Ya’d be bitchin’ around like you dying from a fuckin’ cold.”

“Ya’ll never see it happen, love.”

After my last round of wrenching, I felt fine enough to help Daryl and Merle enter a few houses by the park and lake to scavenge for supplies. We found more cans and even three packages of dehydrated food in a house, pickles and canned fruit in other, two bottles of Gatorade on the third, one of which I drank right away.

We were reaching the fourth house when a group of walkers approached us.

“Eight”, Merle stated after quickly counting.

“Ya’ll right, Sam?” Daryl asked me when the three of us got our backs together in a circle, looking out at the walkers.

“I’ll manage.”

Without stepping out of that position, we killed the walkers, plus three more that got attracted by the noise, and stood silent for a moment, waiting for more but none came.

“Clear,” Merle called after a while and we walked away, stepping over the corpses toward the house. My nausea was back, but I managed to breathe and control it. We entered this house, finding one more walker on the hallway, which Daryl killed with a stab in the eye, and moving further into the house, another one.

A small one.

“Fuck,” I whispered looking at it. It was a girl, couldn’t have been more than five years old, so thin and small, dead hungry eyes staring at us as she stumbled forward, little hands reaching out. I pushed her away easily and she kept coming.

“You got this?” Daryl asked from behind me.

I only nodded, a knot forming in my throat. It was easy to kill the big ones. Damn, too easy already, now that I knew the best ways to do it and the fear I had felt in the beginning was subsiding. Killing a little one, though… I could see she had been a sweet little girl, she was still wearing pajamas.

Better put an end to it already.

I held the tiny frame tightly from behind and slid the knife, as gently as I could, into her temple. The little girl’s corpse stopped moving instantly, and instead of letting it fall, I picked her up in my arms and took her outside.

I threw up again right after that.

Returning to the house minutes later, I stopped looking down at one of the bodies of the nine walkers we’d dealt with. We’d failed to see that one of the males had been wearing a shoulder gun holster, a small revolver tucked into it. I struggled quite a lot but was able to take it off him. I walked into the house again putting on the holster, trying it on.

“Hey, sugar lips!” I heard Merle call just as I entered the house’s living room. He was standing on the opposite side of the room by a threshold when I looked at him. “Check it out.” and with that he reached for the light switch. The living room was washed bright with artificial light.

“You’re fuckin’ kidding me!” I squeaked and ran out of the room to the hallway, where I met Daryl – who for some reason had a baseball bat in his hand – and entered the bathroom. He returned to see what it was about and saw me leaning for the shower faucet, testing the running water with my hand. First good surprise was that there was running water, the house probably had a well or something, and the second, incredible surprise… I turned to look at him. “We got hot water! How’s that possible?”

“Solar panels on the backyard.” Daryl explained.

I didn’t say anything; just smiled. A bright, truly relieved smile. My face felt weird, I guess it’d been long since I smiled this happily. Daryl surprised me by smiling back, his smile reaching his eyes and all I could think, again, was _damn_.

* * *

It was the single most heavenly showed I had ever had in my entire life. Simple like that. There was still soap and shampoo left there, so I didn’t have to use the ones I’d been carrying, and I took the chance to also brush my teeth. Twice, in fact. Even though I didn’t take too long there - because I was gonna make sure my unlikely end-of-the-world companions showered as well - I felt reinvigorated by the time I left, my dreadlocks washed and dripping water (they had started to look brown instead of blonde by then), smelling like soap, my skin taking a red flush from all the scrubbing, wearing clean clothes I’d found in one of the closets of the house.

I found every window of the house sealed – with furniture or boards, the doors safely shut, and none of the Dixons in sight. My stomach had settled, all I felt now was very sleepy and relaxed – just as relaxed as it was possible those days. I looked for them in the house and only found a note, written in a piece of paper towel.

“ _Gone hunting. Stay put_ ”.

It was hours before they returned. I took a book out of the living room bookshelf but hated it on the first page; rummaged again through all the closets, cabinets and boxes in the house, and made a pile of useful things I found by the door – batteries, a rope, a pair of very small binoculars, two rolls of duct tape, a sewing kit and a map – some clothes that fitted me and a few for the guys. On the kitchen table, I placed everything eatable I found, leaving the rotten ones away in a cabinet. Canned fruit, a pack of beef jerky, two cans of cherry coke, a brand new jar of peanut butter, a gallon of mineral water, salt, pepper, dried herbs for seasoning and some red spice I didn’t know but smelled amazing, and a big can of vanilla pudding.

I stilled when placing this last one with the others, though. My stomach, now nausea-free, rumbled loudly at the sight of it, my mouth watering. I opened it with a knife and sat on the couch, legs crossed and the big can rested on them. The day had started to turn into evening, and I didn’t turn on any light, even knowing there was energy to do so; I didn’t want to attract any attention to the house.

The can was empty before I knew it. It was like waking up from a delightful dream. I looked at the licked out spoon and down at the empty can and only stared for a moment. My mind started to race as I froze there, looking at the bottom of the can. Thoughts of how nauseous I had been all day, of how desperately I had eaten all of that, and the math, oh, the fucking _math_ – how many weeks had it been since I was with that guy from school, what was his name again, John or something? I just remembered it had been nice, almost good but not great. Four or five weeks? That goddamn box of tampons had reminded me that I was supposed to have needed them by now. My heart went cold and my stomach rumbled in hunger again, as if I hadn’t just eaten anything, completely ignoring my now almost desperate brain.

“No”, I whispered. “No, no, no, no –”

A click on the door got me throwing the can on the couch and jumping to my feet, gun out of the shoulder holster I had replaced over the clean clothes and pointing at the door. After a moment it got opened and Daryl entered, followed by Merle with something thrown over his shoulder. They saw me standing there in the dim light, gun pointed and they could probably see me trembling slightly.

“Hey, relax, jus’ us,” Daryl assured me lowering his crossbow to the ground.

“Fuck!” I cursed lowering the gun. “Little heads up woulda been nice.”

“Lil’ gratitude wouldn’t be bad neither.” Merle kicked the door shut. “Gone out and back with a nice lil’ dear for dinner.”

The thought of fresh meat had my mouth watering again. I swallowed hard, mind on _that_ again. “Yeah… Thanks, that’s great.” I mumbled and moved to the kitchen.

“Nah-ah, wait a minute!” Merle went after me. “What is it, princess? Think ya just gonna thank and is all? Ya gotta cook it.”

“Did I say I wouldn’t?” I snapped, turning to him “Fuck, just gimme a break!”

Daryl reached us with the small dear in his hands and plopped it heavily on the sink. I figured it wasn’t even adult yet – but to hell with preservation laws these days. Daryl took out a knife and moved for it.

“Show me how to clean it,” I told him standing by his side.

He looked doubtful at me, “Ya sure?”

“Am asking, aren’t I?”

“Nah, ya gonna throw up again.”

“I’m fine. Come on, ya guys hunt, I clean.”

“Yeah, ya got sick with a brain this morn –”

“I’m not a fuckin’ wuss, Daryl, got sick once and ya’ll gonna think that’s me now? Come on; show me how to clean the fuckin’ dear!” Yeah, I did yell. Poor guy was just kinda looking after me in his own way. I can’t explain, I was just too angry inside, a knot on my throat, the good mood I had from the shower totally gone by now. Still at it, I snapped her head to Merle, who was still there and smiling. “And you, swipe that fuckin’ annoying smirk outta your face and go take a shower, you fuckin’ stink.”

Merle laughed aloud and raised his hands, moving out of the kitchen. “PMS, anyone?”

I groaned aloud, bot bothering to hide my mood.

“I wish.”


	6. Day 14

“Case you’re wondering where all the people are…” I mumbled quietly as Merle slowed the truck down, the road stuck with cars, until he stopped at the end of the line, more cars approaching and stopping behind us. People were out talking, looking around as if the answer would be right there on sight. Merle turned the truck off and we just sat there quietly, uncertain decisions to be taken. We were near Atlanta, but the traffic jam had extended so far that it wasn’t close enough so we could see anything or even walk there, especially with all out stuff.

After a while, we decided it would never move again – literally, never, really. – in spite of what people around us were saying. They believed in the shelter, at least most of them, and they believed nothing too bad was happening. Daryl opened the door by his side and jumped out. I followed him out with no question. As my feet hit the asphalt, I heard the driver’s door open as well and Merle groan as he stirred his muscles also getting out of the truck.

“You stay here,” Daryl told us. “Gonna check how far it goes.” He completed as he turned around, swinging his crossbow across his back and walking away.

Many long minutes later, I had been sitting quietly on the side of the truck, booted feet resting on the tire, keeping an eye on people who walked by too close to our things. The big, stylish motorcycle on the back of the truck called quite a lot of attention, especially when surrounded by full bags and, I reckoned, a dreadlocked tattooed blonde carrying a gun and a big muscled redneck snarling with a rifle in hand. When Daryl returned, as Merle smoked and observed the area around while standing in front of the truck, he informed us that it was no use to wait; if we stayed there, we’d be going nowhere.

“Let’s get the fuck outta here then,” Merle said throwing his cigarette on the ground and stomping on it. “Where to? Sam?”

Ok, wow. Merle was asking me what to do? Seriously, _Merle_? I looked at him and saw that Daryl was looking at me as well, both waiting for… For what? Instructions? A decision? Was I the one supposed to decide this? I said nothing, too stunned to form words but also not wanting to question this, because I always, why whole life, trusted myself to make my own moves more than anyone else. Maybe it was good they were asking me, and they were probably going to listen to me. Ok, good then, I decided. I’ll be… _Leading_ , I guess.

I jumped out from the truck to the road and leaned inside the car to take the map out from the glove box. Still quiet, I rounded the truck to open it on the hood, both Dixons looking down at it over me shoulders. They gave their opinions, pointing down at the road on the map, mostly disagreeing with anything the other said, but I wasn’t listening. I created a Dixon-arguing-filter.

“No way to enter 675?” I asked Daryl, who had probably seen the entrance of said road on his walk.

“Nope,” Daryl answered over my shoulder.

“So we’ll turn around,” I informed them and looked at the midsection of the road, checking to see if there was space for us to drive over the grassed area. I looked down at the map again and my finger landed on a point on the map. “Take Walt Shepperd's ‘til Jonesboro, then 54 to Peachtree where we can take 74 all the way to 85. We’ll try through there.”

“And if it’s another dead end?” Daryl asked as I folded the map again, a deep frown worrying my brows.

I stopped and sighed as I turned around, folded map in hand and looked from Daryl to Merle and back. “Then we’re fucked.”

* * *

“Guess we’re fucked then, that right?” Daryl asked.

“Yep.” I popped the p. “Deeply… Deeply. Fucked.”

Night had fallen. The truck stopped on the 85 traffic, cars in front and behind us stopped, motors turned off, and people all around exactly like it had been before. I opened the door and hopped down to the asphalt, looking around. Merle also left the car after me and stood by my side, pulling up his waistband.

“Gonna go take a piss,” he informed in a groan and left, just as Daryl approached.

“Should see if anyone knows anything we don’t. If maybe got some on the radio.”

“Yeah. At least one of us should stay in the car, though. Too many people, don’t want our things gone.”

Instead of an answer, Daryl offered me a cigarette, which I accepted without a second thought. He lit it up for me and I took a long, delicious drag, letting the relaxation take me for a moment. I looked at the lit ember glowing orange and felt it hit me. I shouldn’t be smoking. If the assumption I had come to the previous night was right, I shouldn’t smoke for many months to come.

“What ya doin’?” Daryl asked me when he saw me press the tip of the cigarette to the edge of the truck carefully, vanishing the ember without ruining the stick.

“I shouldn’t be –” I stopped herself. There was no way I was telling him, and also, I mean, telling him what? I wasn’t even sure, and even if I was sure, I wouldn’t be ready to talk about it. “– wasting it. I wanna save it, don’t wanna run out of ‘em. You should slow down a bit, too.”

Daryl shrugged and smoked the whole thing anyway as we stood side by side in silence, looking around. We waited for Merle to return and asked him to guard our stuff, to which he complied immediately by taking his gun out of the holster and jumping up on the bed of the truck. He sat down on the roof of the car, the gun resting on his thigh, but still pretty visible.

Nobody’s radio was working, it seemed all the transmissions had been cut out completely. Daryl and I could see people were more worried now, on the edge of panic. We had wandered away for about half a mile when our attention was turned upwards to the sky, where half a dozen helicopters flew past the road towards the city. People started running to the woods, eager to see what was happening, and Daryl followed suit, his hand grabbing my wrist firmly, dragging me along without a word.

Not far from the road in the woods, Atlanta was visible from above. I could see there was no electrical light there, giving the place a gloomy atmosphere. The helicopters were just reaching the city as Daryl and I stopped there to watch, along with many other people.

There was a moment of silence, of stillness, from the far away helicopters, the city itself and the people, it seemed nobody was breathing, and then the chaos proceeded. The helicopters dropped bombs down on the streets, massive explosions with fires higher than a few buildings. It was surreal. In the few seconds before the sound of the explosions could reach us, it felt like it wasn’t really happening, like it was a scene in a very well-done movie on a very realistic screen.

Daryl’s hand was still clutching my wrist when the sound came. Deafening explosions that I could feel inside my chest, and then it was like everything else exploded along with the city. People were screaming in terror, crying, pacing around as they watched their only immediate hope fly through the air.

“Son of a bitch!” Daryl shouted, letting go of me to cradle his own head, and I woke up from my own daze of disbelief.

“No!” I guess I yelled. “Fuck, no!!”

After a long round of cursing, heart-pumping painfully in my chest, I stopped, hands resting on my knees, trying to breathe and think. My wrist ached with that weird feeling in it, stronger than ever. What to do, where to go were the main questions, along with what the fuck was going on and why did they bomb the city? What about the shelter? It had to have blown up too! My mind was working fast, reaching no conclusion, and it fell once again in the possibility – quite a strong possibility, I knew it – that I would have to look out for the safety of a child now, not only my own and the Dixon’s anymore. If there was no Atlanta, no shelter, no help coming from anywhere, was there any future?

Well, it was not the first time in my life I had asked myself that question. Was there a future? I had given up and resumed fighting and given up again on and on in my life, but now it felt different. This was new, this was unknown. It felt like a brand new day, and now it wasn’t just me. I wasn’t alone any longer. Right then I remember the excitement I had felt that day staring at out the window at the Dixon’s, and why I had felt it. It seemed impossible to feel that again now, with my ears still a bit deafened by the explosions that destroyed any shelter hope in Atlanta, but I understood why I had felt it. It was the end of all the crap that I had lived in my life. It was the end. It was time to start over, to fight and start over and move on.

Taking a deep breath, I straightened my back, squared my shoulders and swallowed down the lump of despair in my throat, making it disappear instantly, the fire burning from the city in the distance reflecting on my eyes.

There would be a future; I was going to make sure there would be.

I was aware of Daryl pacing around me, hands on his head, staring at the city, cursing a little more. That was it, then. We’d come all the way over here to be sure if there was or there wasn’t a chance in Atlanta, I said we had to know, whatever it was. Now we knew.

“We gotta find a quiet place,” I said firmly over the chaos and felt Daryl stop pacing by my side, even though I couldn’t see him, my eyes still trained on burning Atlanta. “Gotta make a distance from the crowds. Shit will hit the fan any moment now.”

“Let’s go.” Daryl’s voice was low, but also decisive.

I hadn’t been aware of how cold I was until his warm hand touched my bare shoulder. Turning around at his motioning, I looked at two people standing close to us. A man was staring wide-eyed to Atlanta, mouth agape, and the woman was buried in his chest, clinging to him and crying desperately.

It bothered me more than it probably should, but being a woman myself I hated to see other women in distress, or in danger or being weak. I had gotten in trouble before because of that. Images of years ago came back to my mind when I saw a friend being hit by her boyfriend and the heat rising to my face, thoughts gone as I lunged at the guy, gripping his neck and punching the side of his head. It had seemed to be working, until the guy overpowered me and I woke up at the hospital a day later, along with her friend. Seeing a woman succumb to her weakness was not as bad as seeing them being assaulted, but it bothered me anyway. Before I knew it, my feet had carried me to the couple and I was touching the woman’s shoulder, startling her and the man, who stared at me wide-eyed. I didn’t look at him, only at her.

“Pull it together, girl,” I told the woman firmly and gently at the same time. “It’s not the time for that. We gotta be strong now. Hell, we always had to be, but now more than ever. Pull it together.”

I was sure she was going to snap at me, tell me to mind my own business in the end of the world, because after a few seconds, the woman still stared at me, her brown eyes shining with tears, and the man had clutched to her even stronger now, protectively. I took a step back and turned towards Daryl, who had been standing there waiting, stunned at my action.

“Thank you,” I heard the woman say, her voice not as weak as I expected. I didn’t turn and kept stepping away. “You’re right,” she spoke again and I finally stopped and turned to see the woman standing alone, having left the man’s arms.

I smiled and nodded at her.

“Do you have any idea what to do now?” the woman asked as I had turned once more.

“Lori, I...” the man by her side started speaking, not looking at me. “I don’t think nobody knows what to do now, but I know we gotta –”

“You have to leave the crowd,” I told her what I had told Daryl. “It’s ‘bout to get ugly.”

With that I turned again, reaching an impatient Daryl who let me step in front of him to lead the way back to the road. As he followed me, we heard steps right behind him and turned to see that couple following us. The man was behind Daryl and he stared, not stopping.

“You right,” the man said. “We got a kid. Need to get outta here.”

“Ya left a kid alone on the road?” Daryl asked over his shoulder.

Daryl and I walked back towards the car, quick steps, noticing the other two were heading in the same direction. As we found Merle, still perched on the roof of the truck, I noticed the couple stopped at a car with another couple and two children, all looking positively desperate. The look on Merle’s face was not so calm either. The sarcastic smirk always present was gone.

“The fuck have ya’ll been?” he yelled at us as we arrived, now standing up by the motorcycle. “Fuckin’ shit exploded!”

“We saw it!” Daryl said angrily.

“We shoulda seen that coming! How didn’t we know?” I asked them as I rested both hands on the truck and looked down. “They bombed other big cities, I shoulda known.”

We talked in circles for a while, trying to calm down. I had to try and ignore Merle for a while, his remarks not helping at all.

“Ya said we gotta find a place,” Daryl told her. “I’m with ya, should set camp somewhere and keep an eye out for walkers and other people.”

“Especially for people,” Merle said staring fixedly down the road.

Daryl and I followed his stare to see the man from before approaching their car. Merle puffed his chest menacingly, standing with his gun. The man eyed him carefully but stood in front of us.

“Sorry, I didn’t introduce myself,” he started. “I’m Officer Shane Walsh”.

Merle snorted aloud and Officer Shane looked at him briefly.

“Sam. This is Daryl and that’s Merle.”

Shane nodded and kept talking. “Lori and I met this other couple by our car, they also got a kid. We’re thinkin’ ‘bout leavin’ the road to find a place and set camp. You’re right when ya said we gotta leave the crowd. I’m a cop, I know how people can get.”

“We get that yer a cop, Officer.” Merle laughed.

“Don’t gotta be no cop to know how people can get,” Daryl said, crossing his arms over his chest.

“And why you tellin’ us that?” Sam asked.

“Because we need people,” Shane answered. “It’s safer in numbers. More eyes to watch out, more sets of hands to find food. And I noticed ya got weaponry,” he pointed at Daryl who had his crossbow hanging on his back and looked at Merle’s gun.

“They’re not the only ones we got,” Daryl said gravely.

“All I’m sayin’ is that if ya wanna join, we leave in the morning. We’ll be right over there.”

We watched as Shane took a few steps back before turning and heading back to his car. Daryl moved to the truck, but I stood there, watching the man retreat. He said he was a cop, and sure had the posture, but there was something else about him. Something I didn’t quite like.

“Safer in numbers,” Merle repeated from his spot above us. “That’s bullshit.”

“Why, ya don’t think it’s safer?” I asked him, finally moving from my place. I jumped over to sit on the side of the truck, legs hanging off of it.

“Ya can’t trust people,” he answered. “We better off on our own.”

“I don’t know, Merle…” I said and threw one of my legs into the truck and reached for a backpack. “Guy had a point. We know what’s out there, but we still know nothin’. I mean, we don’t know how many of those things we’ll find anywhere we go; we don’t know how many looters we’ll find either.”

“We can take care of it,” Daryl said approaching us. He threw each of us a bag of chips.

“Yeah, we can, but to a limit,” I replied, holding the bag of chips and fishing into my bag, removing a can of anchovies after a moment. “If people start grouping as this guy wants, looters will, too. Best way against a big group would be to be in a big group, as well.”

They said nothing, considering it, and we ate in silence for a moment, thinking. Mouthful of chips, Daryl restarted the discussion. “Ya right. So ya think we should go with ‘em?”

“Not sure.” I made a face. “Guy’s kinda...I don’t know.”

“Guy sniffs,” Merle clarified. “Can see it in his eyes.”

“Damn, right, that’s it,” I agreed, pointing briefly at Merle. “I knew I knew that look. But that’s not all,” I stopped to take a sip of water. “Don’t know, just don’t like him. Think I might go there and chit chat for a bit. See what I can find ‘bout the others.”

I jumped down after finishing eating and walked over to the two cars, leaving Merle and Daryl behind. Six people were gathering around the cars.

“Hi, excuse me,” I said softly as I approached and all of them looked at me.

“Uh, hi.” Shane rubbed his nose. “This is Sam. She and her friends are considering joining us to set up camp, ain’t that right?” he asked with a smile.

“Yeah, we, uh… Well, we’ve been alone, just the three of us since the beginning so, you know.”

“Where are you coming from?” the same woman I had talked to before asked. I remembered her name vaguely. Lori, I guessed.

“South. We left Savannah four days ago.”

“How was it there?” Shane asked.

“Overrun just like nearly every town we passed. Saw people still around in Macon, but it wasn’t pretty.”

“Do you...” a short-haired, graying woman approached, arms crossed, voice small. She paused before starting again. “Do you know something? About what this is?”

I shook her head slowly. “I know just as much as you do… Dead people rising up, no authority know anything about it. Radio said it was a virus, then bacteria, parasite, then that they had a cure, then that they hadn’t a clue…” I breathed out and crossed my arms. “And now, they bombed Atlanta, where we thought we’d find shelter, so… Yeah, I’m just as clueless as you are.”

“What about them?” Shane asked, looking pointedly at her truck a few yards away.

“What about ‘em?” I repeated, puffing my chest a little and straightening my back. Wow, talk about instincts. When the fuck had I become protective of the Dixons?

“Ain’t the friendliest kind of guys when I went over there.”

“We got things, they’re protecting it,” I explained shortly. “We scavenged and we got attacked. They ain’t friendly to any stranger who comes close. Do you blame ‘em?”

“People are not going to steal from you…” the frail-looking woman said again.

Behind her, a large man with a big nose snorted, shaking his head. His wife looked back at him and visibly shrunk. Really, she literally shrunk, retracting her shoulders into herself and looking at the ground. Oh, no, here was the heat on my face again.

“What is it, Ed?” Shane asked the man.

“Women’s fuckin’ naivety gonna get us robbed. Or killed,” he said, looking around and then rested his eyes on his wife. “Do us all a favor, Carol, quit sticking your oar in.”

I watched as the woman, Carol, with cheeks pink with embarrassment, turned away from the group, going to stand with the two children. Lori looked at me just then and we exchanged a knowing look. I had to breathe and swallow down a lump of anger that rose in my chest, but I’m sure as hell I couldn’t hide the feeling from my eyes as she stared at Ed. He threw the butt of his cigarette to the floor and stomped on it, staring down at me.

“Think they’re right.” Shane moved on, ignoring what had just happened. “That’s what we gotta do, too. Lori, could ya please close the car? Our things are in there and nobody’s keeping watch.”

Lori nodded and moved to do as he said. Before reaching her car, though, she turned to look at me again and gave me one single nod, beckoning me to come along. I uncrossed her arms and followed her.

“He’s been doing it all night,” Lori said as we stood together away from the others’ ears. There was a lot of noise around us. “He’s already yelled at the girl, Sophia, and denied Carl food.”

“Ok, so, Sophia is the little girl and Carl –”

“Carl is my son.”

“The woman is Carol?”

“Yeah. Shane is not sure if he wants Ed in the group, he told me. He knows the man’s trouble.”

“Even if it means that his wife and daughter are out, too?”

“Well, they could come with us if –”

“Ain’t no way they’re coming without Ed. Man’s got her tied to his strings,” I interrupted. “Ed is coming, but not because of him. Because of them. I ain’t leaving them behind.”

Lori looked a little confused at me, I guess digesting that I had just made a decision, but she nodded anyway, relieved. “Ok. Good.”

“Now, close the car and get back to your husband. I’ll go get you and Carl some food, okay?” I said turning to leave.

“Oh, uh…” Lori made me stop. “Shane isn’t my husband.”

“Oh?”

“No, my husband was…Well, he’s gone. Shane’s his friend, he helped us.”

“Oh. Ok. Sorry about your husband.”

As I reproached Shane, I heard the doors of the car being closed somewhere behind me. “You didn’t bring any food?” I asked the man. Shane was sitting on the driver’s seat, door open, fumbling with the radio, trying to get some station on the dial.

“No. Just packed some clothes and some camping stuff…Thought we’d be at the shelter by now.”

Ok, smart ass cop. Didn’t think of food? Come on!

“We got stuff. Food,” I said and turned to look at where Ed was still standing, listening to us. “If ya have food, too, it’s time to share, or ya outta the group,” she stated, gesturing a cut at the throat at him. He got rage in his eyes immediately. I ignored it and speaking to Shane. “We gotta ration, don’t know when we’ll come across food again. They can hunt,” I nodded towards our car, to where Shane looked quickly before returning his attention to me. “So if we find some forest or a park, it’d be the best, at least for a start.”

“That’s what I was thinking,” Shane agreed. “But we can’t move now. Gotta wait for the first light.”

“Yeah,” was I said as I left him on his seat.

I walked back to the car. On my way there, I saw two men starting a fight by one of the cars and dodged away from them before they got physical. It was already taking too long for the fights to start. We needed to get the fuck out of here soon. Merle poked Daryl to catch his attention, showing him I was coming back.

“So, what ya say, boss?” Merle smirked.

“We got ourselves a group.” I decided firmly, ignoring his sarcasm.

“You sure about that?” Daryl rested his elbows on the side of the truck, looking at me sideways.

“Yeah, pretty sure. But I don’t like neither of the men. Shane with his weird eyes and that officer stance, and the other one, Ed, who is a sexist son of a bitch who probably beats up his wife.”

“Why you wanna stay then?” Daryl asked, his expression denouncing he thought I was out of my mind.

“We’re safer in numbers like Officer Sniffers said. And I think any group that has children will have people willing to fight any way they can to protect them. Call that an advantage.”

“Alright.” Merle nodded. “But I ain’t gonna take orders from the cop. Not ‘bout to become nobody’s bitch.”

“Cop’s not the leader,” and hell, I was gonna make sure he wasn’t. I moved to take some food from the truck. “I’ll be damned if I let him order around. He might be useful for security stuff, though, you know, experienced in these kinda things, I’ll give him that.”

“Yeah, just gotta tell him that.” Daryl handed me a bottle of water to go with the potato chips I had in hand.

I snorted a laugh. “I’m gonna, don’t worry. You guys should go over there and meet ‘em.”

Daryl snorted rudely. “I can join the group, but I ain’t gonna make social. Forget it,” he said, walking away.

“I’ll go with ya, love,” Merle said hopping down to the asphalt by my side. “Don’t worry, I got your back.”

“Yeah, I do worry.” I reached out a hand to make him stop, and turned to him. “Listen, Merle, this is important. When you’re being, you know, yourself, with just Daryl and me, it’s alright, we can deal with it. But we’re gonna need to live together with these people for fuck knows how long, so you gonna have to pretend to be… Normal. Well, as normal as possible.”

“Sayin’ I ain’t normal, sugar?”

“Yeah,” I told him matter-of-factly. “Come on, don’t act offended, you know it’s true. You always barking and making offensive comments about everything, ain’t everybody gonna let it go. Last thing we need now is to pick a fight and have to hit the road again.”

“Nah, you listen, muffin. I ain’t gonna act like what I ain’t. I’m a man of opinion, and I ain’t scared of sayin’ it.”

“Yeah, that’s precious. You can give your opinion all you want, but give it to me. I’ll filter it and translate it into something people can digest. You know how people are with _feelings_ ,” I said, rolling my eyes at the word and making a quote gesture. “And I need you, Merle. I need both you and Daryl in this group, so it will be safe. So I’ll feel safe. Come on, please?”

Damn, how things change. I didn’t even think to say it. Did I just say that I needed Merle around to feel _safe_? The man who scared me until two weeks ago? Well, I mean, the dead were walking on earth now, so I guess my opinion on Merle changing shouldn’t be that surprising. The weirdest thing was that I actually meant it.

Merle sniffed, looking down at me in silence for a moment, maybe as stunned as me by what I said, then rubbed his shaved head, looked around, and finally breathed out and looked at me again.

“If that’s what ya need me to do, I’ll do it. And I’ll keep an eye on those two sonabitches for ya, alright?”

“Alright,” I smiled, relieved. “Thanks, Merle.” I slapped his arm before leading the way to the rest of the group.

“Any good piece of ass over there, at least?”

“No,” I told him firmly, pointing a finger at him. “You stay away from those women.”

“Well, a man’s gotta eat!”

“Yeah, so do the dead.”


	7. Day 15

A flock of birds flew through the sky above the road, chirping loudly and joyfully as the first rays of the sun lit up the landscape, pinks, and oranges painting it beautifully. A clear contrast against the road, infinite rows of cars parked in a line, gloomy and quiet. It was like nature was mocking us all, pretending nothing out of the ordinary was happening. Like it was celebrating the fact that the city a few miles away had been bombed; celebrating that nature had finally won over humanity.

I’d been staring at the sunrise for a while, sitting on the roof of the car, hugging my knees against my chest. It was gorgeous. After a while I took a deep, deep breath and felt the air was fresh; the smoke from the cars’ exhausts having dissipated hours ago. I had always liked the sky. One good thing about having lived in Garden City was that I could always see the sky there; bright nights of full moons or with millions of shining stars; and the sunrise. More often than not, when the sky was clear, I left her house a few minutes earlier than necessary just so I could take a glimpse of the sky.

Now, on top of the truck, head turned up to avoid seeing the rows of cars and strange, hopeless people around, I felt a tiny flicker of normalcy. The world was still out there; it was only different. By my side, having been silent for more than one hour, Daryl had his elbows resting on his knees, biting into his lower lip, mind seemingly miles away but his presence still there, solid by my side.

“About this group,” he slowly broke the silence in a real low voice, for my ears only.

I turned her head to look at him for a moment and waited for him to go on, but he didn’t say anything else, his thumb now suffering the abuse from his teeth.

“Yeah?” I encouraged him in a whisper, which made Daryl turn his head to look at me.

He still took a few moments to speak. “I don’t like people,” he lowered his eyes and it sounded like a confession.

“I know.”

“Don’t trust them,”, he looked at me again.

“I know. I don’t either.”

He didn’t answer, but also didn’t look away, again biting into his lip.

“That’s why I need you and Merle with me,” I moved on gently. “We’ll be with them for safety. For a real camp, for weapons and more lookouts, for food.”

“But we –” Daryl said suddenly, without a thought, and stopped himself abruptly.

“The three of us?” I whispered leaning a bit closer to him as if I was sharing a secret. “We’re our own group, from the beginning. I’d like to keep it that way.”

Daryl kept quiet again, eyes fixed on mine like he nearly never did, dancing from right to left, searching for something. He then nodded slowly, no longer biting on his lip, trying to see if I really meant it.

“We’re still it… Right?” he asked in the same whisper a moment later.

I took a moment to understand. Being in a group, as small as it was with only three people, seemed to mean more to Daryl than he had ever let out, and I understood it by his question and unguarded expression; unguarded like I had never seen before. He liked what we had and didn’t want to lose it.

“Of course,” I said softly, hiding well my surprise, I think. “We’ll always be it. No matter the group we’re in. You and me…” I paused and added, as an afterthought “…and Merle,” because for a moment I did forget to mention Merle and I wondered why. Was I thinking of just Daryl and me as a _together_ thing? I did get along the way much better with Daryl than with Merle, that was a fact and I’m sure even they knew it. “We’ll stick together,” I finished and gave him a small, reassuring smile and felt the need to add “Right?” having a sudden need to also hear it.

Daryl nodded. “Right. I’ll have your back.”

“Yeah,” I smiled more. “And I got yours,” and lightly shoved his shoulder with mine, receiving the same gesture back a moment after, accompanied by tight little closed lips smile.

I was still smiling when I looked again at the sunrise, feeling strangely content for someone in my situation. What was it about this little conversation that warmed my heart like what, like I hadn’t felt in real long time? By her side, I could feel Daryl stealing a few more glances at me, not lingering for too long on each look. By the corner of my eye, I caught him eyeing my tattooed art like he was paying attention to each of them just now. There was a perfectly drawn green hummingbird flying among orange flowers, right above my elbow. A little higher, on my shoulder, the silhouette of a little girl standing, arm outstretched towards a balloon that was clearly soaring away from her. Under the balloon, a date; August 1998. Lower, on my forearm, a colorful mandala with Bowie’s “you’re too old to lose it, too young to choose it” written in typewriter letters under it.

Daryl was thinking hard about something, I could tell. He was back to biting his inner lower lip, poor flesh must be sore by now, a sot frown worrying his forehead, but still looking at me and away repeatedly. I wished he would talk to me, speak what was on his mind.

“Uh, hey, hum…” an uncertain voice woke us both from our thoughts. Both of us looked down at the asphalt, a bit startled, to see a young man, Asian with a baseball cap who looked no more than a teenager. “Excuse me?”

“Yeah?” I was the one to speak, not moving. Daryl did tense a bit by my side, though. Not much, the boy didn’t look like a threat.

“I heard you talking last night? This is my car.” he pointed to the one parked right by ours. “I wasn’t trying to overhear, just… Heard you. I’m - I’m Glenn, by the way.”

“Yeah, _Glenn,_ what did ya hear?” Daryl asked annoyed by the interruption.

“You’re forming a group to get away from the road and set camp?”

“That a question?” I stretched my legs in front of me and crossed my arms.

“No. Question is if I can join.”

I stared at him for a moment. There was no reason at all why I wouldn’t let him join. He was young and probably energetic, and he looked smart – maybe I was just stereotyping him – but we could use smart people in the group.

I looked at Daryl and he shrugged, “You call it.”

I looked again at Glenn, “You know how to do something useful?”

“I learned how to shoot years ago, but I don’t have a gun. And I can run pretty fast, won competitions at school… I’ve killed a few of the dead when I was escaping, so I think I can deal with them. And Atlanta?” he kept going as he pointed towards some random spot with his thumb over his shoulder. “I know the streets like my own backyard if it’s needed to go there for something. I just… Yeah.”

I simply stared at him for a long moment, one eyebrow up, thinking. Well, I wasn’t really thinking, I had agreed already. I guess I was in a better mood today, enough to even tease the boy. But I felt for him, poor guy, he started t shift his weight from one foot to another, looking from me to Daryl repeatedly.

So I finally smiled at him, “Yeah, you can come.”

Glenn laughed. “Oh, phew! Good, thanks!” and he looked at Daryl, smiling. “Hey!”

“Yeah.” was all he got as an answer, just I Sam hopped down to the floor and extended her hand at the boy.

“I’m Sam.” we shook hands. “This is Daryl, and there’s one more sleeping in the car, name’s Merle.”

Daryl also fell to the asphalt and hit the front of the car three times with his palm. “Wake up!” he shouted and we watched as Merle woke up from a deep daze, defensively looking around the road through the windows, asking “what” repeatedly.

“Morning, sleepyhead!” I said in a sing-song voice.

“Son of a bitch!” was his answer

Daryl poked me and pointed down the road, to where Shane and Lori approached us being followed by three new people who hadn’t been there last night.

“Morning.” Shane greeted us. “You guys ready?”

“Almost,” I answered. “Hey, this is Glenn, he’ll be joining us.”

Shane eyed Glenn for a moment, as the boy waved awkwardly at him, and looked back at me, annoyed.

“Ya picking up people now?”

Oh, the nerve. Instead of an answer, I leaned to her left to be able to look at the three new people behind Shane; an older man with a bucket hat and two blonde girls, very similar to each other. I looked at each of them for a moment then smiled. “Hi, I don’t believe we met, I’m Sam.” and looked back at Shane, smile vanishing in a blink of an eye. “Yes, I am, just like you.”

“Dale’s got an RV. Might be useful.” Shane explained. “Andrea and Amy were with him.”

“And Glenn needed a group. He can run.” I finished and looked again at the three people. “Welcome to the group. We’re heading back south 85 until we find some other road. Gonna look around checking for places. After we find it, all our supplies will be rationed and shared. Get used to the idea.”

“Hey, can I speak to you for a moment?” Shane said in a low, a but urgent voice and touched my arm to nudge me away from the group. Daryl tensed by my side, taking a step to follow us, his chest puffed.

“Alone?” Shane asked looking from me to him, eyebrows raised.

“Anything you gotta say to me, you can say it to Daryl. Gonna him later anyway.”

Shane breathed out loudly as to control something that had instantly boiled inside him. I didn’t want to know what but wondered what the fuck did he want to tell me that Daryl’s presence would ruin it.

“Look, it’s just…” Shane started once we were away from the rest of the group, Daryl standing facing us both with his arms crossed. “I’ve come to you and invited ya to join _my_ group. Right? Glad you accepted, but we gotta set some boundaries here. Can’t have too many people calling on decisions here. I’m an officer, alright? I know how to deal with things.”

“You’re a cop?” Daryl asked in an impressed tone, making me look surprised at him. I’d never heard him joke before. I liked it, the sarcastic tone. “Really? Hadn’t heard about it yet.”

I held in a laugh, a smile playing on my lips trying to contain it. By the look in Shane’s eyes, he was quickly approaching some kind of limit that I preferred not to push. At least not for now.

“Being a cop in the fuckin’ end of the world ain’t gonna mean that much, Shane,” I said as my smile vanished. “We all got abilities here, you got yours, I got mine. If ya think you’ll be making all the decisions for the group just ‘cause of the profession ya had before the end o the fuckin’ world, well, you wrong.”

“Now look here –”

“You _will_ be making decisions…” I raised my voice to interrupt him and lifting a hand between us to make him stop talking “if that’s _so_ important to you _if_ you make reasonable decisions. That’s all it’s gonna take. For now, this group has no leader. We don’t know you, alright? Ya can’t expect people to do as you say with no questions asked.”

“Ain’t that what you just did?”

“I stated the obvious, is what I did. Last night we talked about leaving the road, the only possible way _is_ south. About finding a place, sharing and rationing things, all the things we talked about last night. Ain’t that what we gotta do?”

Shane stared at me in silence, big-eyed, hands on his hips. After a moment he nodded, tongue liking his teeth, and looked from me to Daryl and back again. With that, he turned his back to them, returning to the group.

“Alright, let’s all get the cars and turn around to the south, it’s time now. We’ll travel together.”

* * *

The day felt like a week as it passed slowly, the stuck traffic on the road making all our cars, truck and RV need to navigate through the grassy path between the lanes of the road, ever so slowly. Down south on 85, the asphalt was little less packed with cars and we were able to gain a little speed, but by then it was already mid-afternoon. We were unable to leave the main road that day. When the evening started to come, we decided to stop in the middle of nowhere, not having a better place to do that. By this time, our caravan was already bigger. One more car and a van had started following us at about four in the afternoon. Shane had sped up to catch up with our truck.

“Ya think we should be worried ‘bout these guys following us?” Shane had asked aloud with both cars moving.

“Saw them too, huh?” Merle shouted from the driver’s seat.

“Yeah, ‘bout a mile ago.”

“Let’s stop,” I yelled leaning over Merle to the window. “We’ll see what they want.”

Shane and I had gone opening the party, Merle, Daryl, and Glenn standing behind us with weapons purposefully on sight. It had turned out to be a family, the Morales couple with their two children, and two more people they had picked up to help on the road, Jim and Jackie. Behind them, alone in a van, was a man named Theodore, but he preferred to be called T-Dog. We talked for a while with those six new people, who practically begged to go and set camp with us. I don’t know what they saw in our little group that made them want to join so badly, there was nothing special about us. But well, we did have weapons and food, I guess the value of those was pretty high then. Shane rubbed his nose, scratched his head and, finally, looked at me. I was just waiting, had been quiet almost all the time, and as I looked back at Shane, I nodded. I didn’t think these people would be the kind we’d like to avoid, and they had children. As I said, any group with children would do anything to protect them. At my acceptance, Shane told it would be ok for them to follow.

“Yeah, that’s a good one,” Merle mumbled when the three of us reentered our truck. “Picking up strays. Latinos and niggers. Gonna start mixin’ up our kinds now?”

“Fuck, shut up, ya dickhead!” Daryl barked from the opposite window.

“See, that’s the kinda comment ya gotta keep just here among us, huh?” I told him. “You say that to them, you start a fight, shit hit the fan even before the camp’s settled.”

“Whatever. But ya think like I do, dontcha princess?”

“Of course not! You’re being an asshole again. A racist asshole, to make it worse! Don’t you ever say anything like it to them!”

Merle said even more racist things for a while and I answered to them for a moment, before realizing that working myself up trying to convince Merle of something was a complete waste of time. After a while Daryl and I just told Merle to shut up once again, Merle told us to go fuck ourselves, and everything was peaceful again.

Now night had fallen and a fire had been built on the side of the road. Glenn was standing on top of the RV with a rifle, keeping watch and Jim was doing the same in the middle of the road. We were exactly twenty people – four children, seven women, nine men. Around the fire, all the women were sitting together, light conversation rolling between us, a clear search for bonding starting to happen, asking each other what we did before the turn, telling about our lives.

Jackie told us she worked at Atlanta’s city hall but hadn’t been in the city on the turning days. She had just lost a cousin in LaGrange and had been there for the funeral. She heard the news about what was happening on the radio as she drove back home. At some point on 85, she got a flat tire and started walking her way up the road. Jackie had walked for hours and was completely exhausted when the Morales pulled up for her and offered a lift. They had just done the same for Jim miles before. In the Morales’ car, she got acquainted with Miranda, who gave her water and something to eat. Their family had been driving from much closer to Atlanta, in search of the shelter. Miranda told us she and her husband were married for almost fifteen years and she was a housewife. Lori and Carol both told they were full-time moms and wives as well. Carol didn’t say much about herself, retreating from the subject by asking Lori about her husband.

Lori told the group he had been a deputy-sheriff in King County and had been shot on duty weeks ago. He had passed away in the hospital just days before, Lori said with a trembling voice and unshed tears in her eyes. Her husband’s best friend had run to their house to pick her and Carl up to take them to the shelter. To enlighten a little the mood, we kept on the subject, Andrea telling them she was a civil-rights lawyer and had been on a road-trip with her sister, Amy, driving her back to college when it all happened. They had been caught up in a walker attack on the road and Dale, with his RV, had helped them to get out, only to later be caught up on the traffic.

They finally asked me what I did, and I told them I was a single waitress who went to adult school at night and jumped around things for sport on the weekends, and that was it. As I spoke, I noticed Carol looking around, eyes searching for something worriedly.

“Uh… Have any of you seen Sophia?” she asked in her small voice.

“She left minutes ago, I saw her get up,” Lori told her. “I thought she had told you she was leaving.”

“No…”

“Where did she go?” I asked Lori.

“Towards their car.”

“Oh… I think she went to sleep then. I’d better –” she started motioning to get up.

“I think it’s alright, her dad’s in the car, isn’t he?” Andrea asked in order to make Carol stay.

“Uh… Yeah. He is…” she got up anyway, a nervous look to the car. “I gonna go there anyway. Good night, girls.”

We all were silent as she left. Jackie looked around at the other’s faces, looking for someone who was thinking the same as her, and found my eyes by her side taking a deep breath, brows furrowed, looking at Carol as she reached the car. I then looked back at Jackie, our glance exchange telling us all we had to know. The group dispersed shortly after that, each woman going to try and find comfort to sleep for a few hours in their own cars.

I went to where Daryl was sitting and smoking on the hood of our truck – Merle had just left him to go sleep inside. I sat by him, controlling by breath because damn, I was angry. My fists were closed tight. Carol didn’t want Sophia alone with her dad, her eyes denouncing just how worried she was at the idea, and the meaning of it made my blood boil. Daryl and I didn’t say anything as Daryl handed me a cigarette. I took it and held it between my fingers, but denied with a gesture when Daryl reached out with his lighter. Still holding it, I rested my elbows on my knees.

“Ed definitely beats up his wife,” I whispered for his ears only. “May touch his girl as well, but I ain’t sure about that yet.”

Daryl took a deep breath then, looking in the same direction I was; the Pelletier’s car.

“Son of a bitch,” he whispered back.

“I know I got nothing with this.”

“Yeah?”

“But if I see something…”

“Won’t blame ya.”


	8. Day 16

A narrow dirt road went up a small hill away from Atlanta. An old sign miles before said it lead to a deactivated quarry. There was a clearing on top of the hill and it was quiet, eerily empty. Nobody moved for a while, looking around through the closed windows of the cars. The clearing overlooked the road that had lead that way and a deep, old quarry filled with crystal clear water and a large patch of woods all around it. It was beautiful. We just stayed there for a while, the noise of the motors quickly dissipating, giving place to a foreign quietness.

After seeing there was no movement, from the dead and the living alike, we all started pouring out of the cars and the empty, small field was filled with the group silently looking around, walking the perimeter, guns ready. Dale climbed up on his RV to check the view, Merle entered the woods, Shane walked for a few yards down the patch that’d take them down to the water, Daryl checked the perimeter for walkers and I checked the other smaller clearing just on the line of the woods. The other men on camp watched our backs, all the other women gathered around one of the cars with the children. After a few minutes of silence, as if we had planned, everybody gathered wordlessly in the middle of the area.

“I think it looks good,” Glenn risked shyly, being the first to break the silence.

“Yeah,” T-Dog agreed. “High enough to make it harder for the dead to come.”

“I think we could set camp here, at least for now?” Dale affirmed with a questioning tone.

“Woods’ good to find food,” Daryl mumbled quietly.

“Rabbit, dear… Maybe pigs.” Merle contrasted with his brother by opining loudly. “Could be barbecuing soon!”

“Water down there might have fish too,” Shane nodded. We all looked at each other nodding in agreement, and Shane crossed his arms when he looked at me. “What ya think?”

I had a more realistic approach. While all of there was thinking just of the positive things, my mind went ahead and noticed all the things that could go wrong here. It was too open. We had just gotten there with no problems at all, others could too, and who said walkers could not go up the hill?

“Gotta check deeper for walkers,” I said worriedly, making shade to cover my eyes from the afternoon sun with a hand. “Seems a good place, but gotta be sure. Set a safety perimeter on the woods, go down to the quarry as well and see if it’s empty. If it’s alright, we set camp here. There’s a good spot over there to set the tents,” I pointed to where I had been looking before.

“Thought ‘bout setting ‘em right here.” Shane disagreed with a tone of finality, shaking his head.

“I think we gotta use this as a living area,” I insisted, crossing my arms. “Make a fire in the middle, but the cars there at the entrance to protect the area and sleep further from it. It’ll be safer if something or someone comes up the road.”

“Sleeping in the woods don’t seem dangerous to you?” Shane asked with a smirk before rubbing at his nose like he thought I was stupid.

“Not if we get the area clear,” Daryl was the one to answer, coming to stand by me. I guess he really did have my back as he said.

“This part here’s too close to the road,” Merle agreed. “If anyone comes that way, better not find us right away.”

“Especially if most are sleeping,” Glenn completed with an apologetic tone.

Without saying anything, Shane finally nodded his agreement, his eyes on me. Oh, fuck that man! They had just simply repeated what I had _just_ said, but when it was me saying it, Shane was quick to disagree, but with them, it was another story. Goddamn fucking misogynist.

“Let’s split up to check it,” I said instead of _fuck you, Shane_. “Sooner the better if we want to get settled before night,” I avoided looking at him again, my arms still crossed and hands balled into fists. “Who’s already killed a walker?”

The men looked at each other. I watched them, Daryl and Merle standing one on each side of me – my very own guards, it felt like, also facing the others. Glenn looked around for a moment before raising a hand, a shy smile on his lips.

“Me too,” T-Dog said after a moment. “Though I ain’t sure it really died, I ran after hitting it.”

“No one else?” Merle asked after the silence that followed. “Fuck, and here we thinkin’ it’d be safer in a fuckin’ group!”

“Ya never killed a walker?” Daryl asked for confirmation in disbelief.

“Never had too”, Dale shrugged.

“Just escaped by running and avoiding them” Shane completed.

“Shit.” I uncrossed my arms and rubbed my face. There was probably soot there now. “Y'all know it’s gonna happen? You gonna have to kill them eventually.”

“How do you kill someone already dead?” Dale asked.

“We saw on tv the cops shooting them and they just kept comin’,” T-Dog said amongst a shiver. “That’s why I ain’t sure that one died.”

“You hit the brain!” I said matter-of-fact but in exasperation.

“And you don’t make noise,” Daryl stated. “Anything loud enough will attract them.”

“Gotta lot to teach ya kids.” Merle laughed. “Damn gotta teach ‘em it all!”

I crossed her arms again and turned away from them, walking over to the car where the rest of the group was waiting. I heard all the men’s steps following me, shoes crunching the dirt on the cleaning.

“We gonna stay here, but only after we check the area”, I started and the quiet conversation that had been going on among them died out to give me full attention. “I’d suggest whoever can’t kill a walker to stay inside the cars, but it’s up to you. Gonna have to learn how to do any anyway.”

“Do you know how to kill them?” it was Amy who asked, uncertain, glued to her older sister’s side.

“Yeah. We ran into lots of them on our way here.”

Ed, who was leaning against the car, once again smoking a cigarette, snorted aloud. “Mustn’t be a big challenge, then,” he mumbled smirking before pulling on the cigarette.

“You haven’t killed any, have you?” I asked him in a louder voice. By his side, his wife Carol, arms crossed, moved uncomfortably.

“Nah,” Ed shook his head. “Don’t worry me though. If ya can do it…”

Were there still laws in action against murder? Maybe it’s time to make a new law, it is okay to murder bigots, racists, and misogynists.

“Alright, fella!” Merle cut before I could answer. I sure I had just started taking a step towards him as I took a breath in. “Let’s see whatcha can do then! Go on, ya comin’ with.”

I walked away from the group shaking my head, mainly away from where Merle walked with Ed, not wanting to hear anything else the later said. People gathered again in the middle of the field after gathering a few weapons from the cars, a few of the women joining us as well, except for Carol, Miranda, and Amy, who decided to stay inside a car with the children. I instructed them no not leave the car in any circumstance. If a walker appeared, they’d just not panic and stay there; walkers apparently couldn’t open car doors.

“Alright, everybody!” Shane started clapping his hand together once. “Apparently most of us have never had to deal hand to hand with a dead, or a –” and he looked smiling amused at where Daryl and I stood together. “– a _walker_? That what you call them?” Shane paused as if waiting for an answer but got none. Daryl and I stared back at him, expressions unchanging. What did he expect us to say? Maybe laugh with him? Shane cleared his throat, looked down for a second before raising it again and moved on. “But if we gonna set camp here and keep it safe, we all have to be able to do it. We’ll protect each other from them; we will protect the weakest and the children, so we gotta know how to do it.”

“But… Kill?” Lori spoke worriedly. “I don’t know, it feels strange… I mean, they might have got this decease, this something we don’t know what is, but they’re _people_ ,” and she looked around, looking for support. “Right?”

“Wrong,” Merle said from where he had been hovering outside the group.

“They’re dead,” Daryl said and everyone looked at him. “They’re no people no more.”

“It _was_ a person up until they died,” I completed his thought. “Then they just get up and try to eat you. You don’t kill it; it kills you, simple as that.”

“See one of ‘em going for your kid, ya gonna know how ya feel ‘bout it.” Daryl’s quiet voice sounded grave.

I only nodded when all of the others exchanged nervous looks, and nobody voiced any more worries about it, although I knew by their looks that they all still had many.

“Alright, we gotta check the area soon if we want the tents up to sleep in tonight,” Shane cut the silence, clapping his hands once more as he repeated my words from before. “Now, the only ones of us who have ever had to kill them were our Savannah friends over there and Glenn,” he nodded at his direction and then at where Daryl and I stood, Merle out of the circle but hovering somewhere behind us. “I’d say we listen to their orientations about it.”

“Go on, babykins,” Merle said and stood behind me, tall enough to look at the others from above my head. “Show’em how it’s done.”

I turned slightly to look at Merle for only an instant, an amused grin on my face and looked back. “Best thing would be to show you, but I’m glad to see we don’t have any walkers around right now, so you’ll see as we walk around the area in a minute. Most important thing ya gotta know is that they do not die if you don’t hit their brain. You cut the head off the body, the head still tries to bite you,” I saw some reaction from the people around, especially from women, but ignored it and moved on. I hoped those reactions would vanish with time, for their own sake. “Best way is with a knife through the eye socket, this part’s easier ‘cause you won’t need to break through the skull. Never forget to pull the knife off, don’t let it fall with the walker or you’ll be unarmed if another one approaches.”

“Can’t we just shoot them?” T-Dog asked. “We got guns.”

“Guns will ring the dinner bell,” it was Daryl who answered. “Any walker around who heard it will turn to ya. I say only use guns if ya have no other option.”

“Also we won’t have bullets forever, gotta make ‘em last,” I agreed. “That’s it in theory, seems easy but when you do it the first time ya might get scared, I know I did. They are loud, disgusting and smell horrible, but you gotta know that if you freeze or panic, you _will_ die.”

“Well, that’s cheery.” Andrea smiled nervously.

“It ain’t supposed to be,” I told her.

“Anyone got another question or can we just go and kill ‘em motherfuckers already?” Daryl asked as he swung his crossbow from his back and held it pointing to the ground.

Mumbling in agreement, the group followed. I waked in front side by side with Daryl, Merle closing the group without having to be asked to. We walked for long minutes with nothing happening. Everybody was silent, I could feel their nervousness and wondered for a moment it walkers were like cats who could pick up the energy of the people around.

“What?” I heard Daryl ask quietly by my side, and only then I noticed I had been smiling.

“Oh, nothing… Just if walkers can feel the fear, we’re fucked.”

Daryl looked behind them, at the group, and as he looked back at me he was also smiling, trying to hide it, though. “Guess we’re fucked anyway. They’d better start looking after themselves soon, or we gonna end up doin’ all the work.”

“It’s ok, we trade protection for food and supplies,” I smiled up at him again.

He smiled back, but before he could say anything else, something in the woods made him stop. A twig cracking and laves spreading out on the ground made him stop dead in his tracks. I stopped immediately, raising an arm to warn everybody else. There was silence for a long moment, and Daryl just kept still, eyes darting around the trees. I just waited for some warning.

“What’s going on?” Andrea’s voice sounded loud among the threes, above the rustling of the wind on the leaves and the birds chirping.

Goddam, motherfucker. Weren’t people fucking _listening_ to what we said earlier?

I turned to her, scowling, and whispered firmly “What did we say about _silence_?”

“Good job, blondie, they heard you,” Daryl said and pointed further to the woods.

I looked in the same direction and saw two walkers stumbling over their legs to approach the group. I raised my hand again, gesturing _two_ with my fingers, and unsheathed my knife.

“You guys don’t move,” I said without taking my eyes off a couple of rotting corpses approaching.

Daryl and I moved towards the walkers, he with his crossbow raised and aimed. When they were a few yards away, Daryl shot a bolt into one of their eye sockets, and the body fell instantly to the floor. Not stopping, I quickened my pace towards the other and shoved my knife sideways into the temple. I had gotten better in breaking the skull. It was over before people around could even think.

“Hey, their friend came to join the party!” Merle said happily from behind the group and everybody turned towards him. Another walker was approaching from behind. Merle already had his red ax in hand, but unlike me, he didn’t walk over to meet with the corpse. He let it approach him, the moans getting hungrier with the proximity.

“Yeah, come and get me, mooch!”

The ax was swung from behind him into the thing’s skull, nearly parting it in half with Merle’s muscular force. Sounds of disgust and even some cheering erupted from the group. Andrea and Lori seemed a little grey from where I was standing. Even though I laughed at Merle’s theatricals, my stomach turned slightly, suddenly remembering the can of pork brains. I swallowed and breathed slowly, willing it to pass.

“That’s how is done!” Merle cheered holding up the ax covered in rotting brain matter.

“Now ya wonder if you should’ve watched more gore movies growing up, huh?” I asked the others, laughing to cover up my nausea.

“Awesome!” Morales cheered.

The three walkers turned out to be the only ones we found in the immediate area of the woods by the camp. Daryl did see quite a lot of squirrels, though, a good promise for a hunt later on. After a long walk around the perimeter, we led the group down the path to the quarry. A single male walker stood in the middle of the road, very still, as if dormant. It turned its head towards our steps on the gravel sound and moaned before turning its whole body and talking unsteady but quite fast steps towards us.

“Who wants to get this one?” I asked the group, my eyes on the walker.

“I’ll go,” Shane said walking past me as he unsheathed his hunting knife, his eyes on the walker who focused its attention on him.

“The faster the better,” I reminded him when Shane hesitated for a moment to decide whether to go for it or wait for it to come to him, my words making him decide to go. He raised his knife and attacked as he walked in fast steps, the lack of focus on aiming right making him miss the walker’s skull. It got him unbalanced and, in less than a second, the corpse was on to him, hands gripping his shoulders and pulling him closer.

“Hold the neck!” Daryl shouted even as he ran to stand by them, ready. “Keep it away!”

“Do something!!” Lori’s shriek panicking voice came from the group.

“The neck!” Daryl shouted again but raised his crossbow aiming instantly all the same.

Shane let his left hand go from where it had been holding the corpse’s arm to grab the rotting neck, his fingers dipping into the flesh a little more than expected, and forced it away, gaining the control to lift his knifed hand and stuck it into the white, dead-looking left eye. The corpse fell to the ground, silence coating the group except for all the labored breaths; especially Shane’s. He turned on the spot, looking at the people, a quick glance and a nod to Daryl. His eyes were a little more open than usual and he as breathing real hard.

“It’s harder than it looks,” he told the group. “Be careful.”

A low laugh issued from the middle of the group, clearly audible among the otherwise quiet, shocked people. All eyes turned to him, Ed looking down, still smiling and shaking his head slightly.

“Again, Ed, got somethin’ to say?” Shane asked him, crossing his arms, tongue coming out to lick at his dry lips.

“Nah,” the man said. “I’m good.”

Shane took an angry step towards him, much like I had done before, but just as Merle stopped me, I stopped Shane. “Hey, I got an idea!” I smiled at him. “Why don’t _you_ take the next one? You should lead the group, go ahead, walk in front of us and take the next walker that shows up.”

Ed carried a sarcastic, annoying smile on his face when he walked towards me. “Don’t think you’re giving me orders, pixie. Ain’t ‘bout to get orders from a puss.”

Daryl took a step towards him; breathe hitching in anger, but I reached out and held his wrist. Saying nothing, I just shook my head slightly when he looked at me, the angry in his eyes not directed at me.

“Well, you are, apparently,” Ed laughed as he looked up and down Daryl before walking down the path, the rest of the group moving unsurely the same way.

“Not worth it,” I whispered, her hand still on Daryl’s wrist, but not holding him in place anymore, just touching. What a damn strong wrist. “He’s gonna get his, ya know that.”

“Yeah, he gonna,” Daryl said looking down at me. “Might as well get it from me.”

I smiled, “Thanks, but I saw him first,” and squeezed his wrist a little before letting go. “He’s mine!”

“Told ya, honeybun,” Merle said as he reached us, no stopping walking. “Got an eye on him.”

We all walked after Ed down the path, the bottom of the quarry slowly approaching. After a couple of minutes in silence, Ed stopped dead in his tracks, starring down at two walkers. Both had already seen him and the group and were walking unsteadily towards us.

“They ya go, big guy,” Daryl said as he approached Ed, while the rest of the group stood behind. He aimed with the crossbow. “One of ‘em is all yours,” he completed before pulling the trigger and eliminating one with a well-placed arrow.

Ed looked behind him for a moment, directly at me, the son of a bitch, and smiled. I raised an eyebrow and nodded towards the walker, encouraging him to show what he could do. He turned again, the walker much closer now, and lunged for it, an old and rusty machete in hand, clumsiness all over. He tried the head but the machete went straight down into its shoulder, getting stuck there as the walker growled even angrier and kept coming. Ed forced the blade up and out of the rotting flesh and tried again, gasping in the effort. He got the head this time, but not strongly enough. It broke the skin and blood flew all over but didn’t even break the skull. He felt the blood covering his face and tried a step back gasping and breathing hard, only to have the sole of his tennis shoe slip on the loose earth of the path. He fell on his ass, barely having time to think and the walker was on him, hands pinning him down by the shoulders, blood and drool oozing down on him.

“No! Fuck! Help me!”

Merle’s laugh could be heard over all the noise right before the other people on the group insisted that someone did something. Daryl even raised the crossbow, but I was closer and obviously ready because I knew there was no way he would be able to kill that walker, and simply stuck the knife in the back of the walker’s skull. It stopped moving and fell on top of Ed just as I removed the blade.

“Shit! Help, help me!” Ed still shouted.

“Shut up, it’s dead already!” I yelled at him and Ed pushed the corpse away. The group passed, some shaking their heads, but most of them looking completely terrified.

Most of the people had the chance to kill their first walker that afternoon. T-Dog was the next after Ed, who looked very red in the face when the men did it quickly by shoving a knife into a walker’s eye. A little more confident, Morales did the same and laughed after, celebrating. Lori and Andrea, even though they looked very green even before it, were also able to do it quite well. Other people had more difficulties, like Dale, Jim, and Jackie, but their specific walker fell finally dead to the ground after a little struggle.

Merle lit a cigarette and passed one to Daryl as they stood together in silence, looking around. I approached them after a minute, also quiet, and Daryl passed his cigarette to me. I shook my head, refusing it. “So what you think?” I asked them, ignoring the confused look Daryl shot me.

“Good for now,” Daryl answered; brows still frowned down at me.

“Far enough from the city to keep big crowds away for now,” Merle said looking up towards the camp. “But nothin’ to stop ‘em from reaching it.”

“Yeah, that’s what I worry about.” I looked up the same way. “Gotta have lookouts all the time.”

“Got enough people for that. They can learn, you saw it,” and looking back somewhere behind them, Daryl snorted. “Except for Ed. He’ll get killed real soon.”

“If he don’t take any of us with him, is good riddance.”

We went quiet again for a moment until Shane came to us, the group already starting to walk slowly up the path back to camp.

“So, uh, that last one was standing in the water when Jackie got him… So I’m thinking we don’t use any of this water without a good boil before.”

“Yeah you’re right”, I agreed and started to walk, the three men following me. “We’re still not sure how we get this thing. If a walker doesn’t kill me, I ain’t going down ‘cause of tainted water.”

* * *

My tent was still flat on the ground as most of the others’ were up, people putting their personal things inside, making a livable place. I yawned. In the last few minutes, I felt like my energy was completely drained, now that things were somewhat calmer. I blinked heavily looking down at the tent’s bright orange fabric and the folded poles in my hand. Crouching down on my heels, I tried to insert the pole in the right place, or at least what I thought was the right place.

“You never camped before, did ya, poppet?”

I looked up from my position to see Merle approaching. “Nah. I got no idea what I’m doing,” I confessed.

“First of all, ya trying to put the wrong pole in the wrong hole.”

“Shit…” I let the pole and fabric fall to the ground. “Fuck it, I’ll just set up that hammock… It’s still warm anyway.”

I got up and groaned at the pain the position brought to my legs and looked around, rolling my neck to feel a satisfying, loud pop. Merle took my place by the tent saying nothing else, only mumbling “women”, under his breath.

“Hey, Andrea! Amy!” I called aloud over the tents, looking to the back of the clearing, and continued once the two sisters looked at me. “That’s too far away. Tents should be closer together, it’s safer this way.”

“But we’re still in the clearing!” Andrea contested.

“Barely, you’re almost under the trees. It’d be better if you moved a little more to the middle, ok?”

Andrea and Amy shared a look. I don’t think they liked me, but fuck it. I preferred them alive than liking me. Amy nodded, though, and they started moving their things closer. I yawned again and turned around to Merle. My tent was up, Merle adjusting the last of it. I noticed it was small, probably the smallest tent on camp.

“You got magical fuckin’ powers or something?” I asked him, impressed, as he got up.

“Just been camping too many times to count,” he told me. “Ya just need the sleeping bag and ya set.”

“That’s great –” I started but another yawn forced itself out.

He laughed at me, “Fuck, woman, just go to sleep!”

“No, got things to do…”

“Hey, by the way, when did ya become the freakin’ little boss ‘round here? I see ya telling people what to do and not to do all day, and bossin’ up Mr. Sniffers over there. The hell’s that all about?”

“Shit, I got no idea, it’s not like I planned to do that,” I said while I zipped the tent open and peeked inside. “I’m just saying what I think like I always done.”

“Yeah, well, careful with that. Ya, don’t wanna be responsible for all those shitheads. Wouldn’t wanna be in your shoes if they start seein’ you as the leader.”

“I don’t even think they, or we, I don’t know, actually _need_ a leader. Why can’t everybody just do shit and survive together?”

“Every pack needs a leader, sweetheart. And every male in the pack wants to be the alpha.”

“I ain’t no male! Where does that put me?”

He laughed, “You procreate with the alpha!”

I laughed aloud, “Fuck, please kill me first!”

“I’ll do it quick and painless.”

My voice was flat when I said “Thanks, that’s sweet, and he laughed.

“Or I’ll just fight Mr. Sniffs-a-lot for the alpha position and ya’d have to procreate with me!”

“Aaaand now you’re an asshole again,” I turned away from him, ready to head back to the clearing.

“Why did ya think I quit bein’?” he laughed more and also turned around to walk away. “Good hangin’ with ya, but I gotta take a piss.”

“Thanks for the tent!”

Minutes later, the sleeping bag inside the tent along with my backpack – bless Merle for going to that store that day in Savannah and getting that stuff – I returned to the empty area in the middle of the camp. I that Dale’s RV was already parked where I had said it should be, a folding camping table set up and Carol around it, a few bags on the floor. I could see the bags were filled with food supplies from the others and that Carol was organizing them; I noticed Daryl’s bag was among them. On the hood of one of the cars parked at the entrance of the camp, Shane, Glenn, T-Dog, and Daryl were going through the weapons we had – not all, seeing that I still had my gun holster with two pistols hanging from my shoulders and a knife tucked into the sheath. Dale was on top of the RV, binoculars aiming down the road and quarry. Ed, Morales, and Jim were setting up twigs and dry leaves in the exact middle of the clearing, preparing to start a fire. Lori had Carl helping her carry a few pans and kettles towards where the fire would be.

I smiled looking around, understanding how everybody had got occupied with something, working together. It looked like it might work. I got hopeful then, seeing we had probably gathered a good group. In a moment so much passed through my mind, many ideas, things we should do, all the stuff we could do. Too much, actually, for someone as tired as I was not. Maybe I’d best think about them later, not now.

Occupying myself as well, I grabbed two big buckets I found where Lori had taken the pans and walked alone down the quarry. I returned with them filled with water a few minutes later.

“Oh, I was just going to do that!” Lori said when I placed them by the fire, which was already starting to burn.

I rolled my shoulders; the buckets had been fucking heavy, “Yeah, it’s alright. We gonna need it to cook whatever it is we can invent from those cans,” I said nodding to where Carol as still fussing over the cans, noticing she had separated a few to the side. “And to drink as well, gotta boil it all.”

“We still have bottles of mineral water for now; do you think we should save them?”

“I guess, yeah. Maybe do what Carol did with the cans, put together all we have and save it all. If we ever got to leave here we have water to carry.”

Lori looked worried, “Why would we need to leave? I mean, other than when all of this is over?”

I stared, nearly laughing and saying _what?!_ at her face. It kinda baffled me that she thought this all would one day be over. It was so obvious to me that once the dead started to rise to ear the living, there was no coming back. Wasn’t it obvious? Or was it obvious just to me? It took me a moment to realize I probably should give her an answer. But what, should I tell Lori all I thought about it, crush her hopes? I was too tired to do it and also I felt for her.

So I just smiled, lips tight together, before saying “We never know. What if we find a place that’s even better than this?”

“I think this looks pretty good. The children like it. It’s like an unexpected vacation for them. Carl always wanted to go camping but Rick and I –” Lori paused and swallowed hard, looking down at her feet. “We never had the time.”

I looked around, looking for something to say. I’d never been too good at comforting someone with words. I cleared her throat after a moment. “All it matters is that Carl is safe and even happy. Look at that,” I pointed to the tree line where Carl, Sophia, Elisa, and Louis were playing together, running around and laughing. “We just gonna try to keep it that way.”

Lori smiled with sad eyes. “Yes, you’re right. Thank you…”

“It’s nothing.”

Lori took a deep breath and shook her head a little, as if to shake away the sad thought from her mind, and changed the subject. “Hey, that small orange tent is yours, right?”

“Yeah?”

“You left the zipper open so I went to close it, you don’t want bugs making their way in here, and well, I saw you only have a sleeping bag?”

“Yeah, and it’s not even mine; Merle got it somewhere before we left Savannah. Why?”

“We have an extra folding bed,” Lori said pointing over her shoulder to the general direction of the tents. “If you want it, at least you won’t be sleeping on the ground.”

“You got an _extra folding bed_?” I laughed out now. “I find it amazing that someone would’ve even _one_ folding bed in the middle of the freakin’ walking dead apocalypse, and you got an _extra_? How did you guys think about that?”

“Well, I thought about it when Shane said we might need to camp for a night or two before reaching the shelter. And you know, I have a kid, mothers develop a strange talent of thinking about every detail. Shane had them in his house; he likes camping.”

“Alright. So it means you, Carl and Shane already have a bed?”

“Yeah, if you want one…”

“Hell yeah!” I laughed with her.

We went together to the tents and Lori gave me the folded aluminum bed. She left me to rearrange my things inside the small habitation. It felt even more crowded now with the bed, but I was satisfied with it. There was no intention of staying in there for long periods anyway. As I was leaving, Sophia, Carol’s eleven-year-old daughter, was passing by running after the other kids. The girl stopped when she saw me.

“Hi,” she said timidly and smiling.

“Hey, what’s up?”

“I like your hair,” the girl still smiled.

“Yeah?” I smiled at her. She was cute. “You know, you can have that one day if you want,” I said as I threw all the loose dreads to one side, over my shoulder.

“Can I touch it?”

Damn, I was proud of those locks. I leaned down a bit, “Of course!”

Sophia took one of the dreads in her hand, rolling it between her fingers. “Cool”, she said after a moment.

“Look, this one has a ring on it,” I easily found that specific one with the ornament.

Sophia took the ring in her hand, looking at the carvings, “You put rings on your hair?”

“And in my nose”.

Sophia seemed to find everything about me interesting. I think my appearance was not very common where she lived, God knows where especially with a father like that who probably dragged her across the street if he saw someone tattooed coming their way. My, pierced nose, the tattoos – I had a phoenix on the back of my shoulder and I explained to her what it meant, she had never heard about them before – and even my gun holster. I was still tired, but the energy and curiosity of the girl, still so optimistic before the facts, seemed to give me a boost of energy. I was now explaining what was the sport I practiced not only to Sophia but for the other three children too. They got excited when I said what I could to do, jumping up and down around me, asked me to show them.

I forced myself not to yawn as I walked with them back to the clearing. The sky was only now starting to darken, the night approaching, the fire in the middle, one metal bucket of water heating up over it. I looked around, looking for something I could do. The possibilities were infinite, so I opted for leaving the children behind as I sped up in run towards the RV. In speed, I climbed on her side of it, pulling myself up on top of it in less than a second – it was not as high as I had thought. I heard the four children cheer and run closer to the car. I smiled at Dale, who had gotten up from his folding chair, scared by my sudden appearance.

“Sorry!” I told him before turning to the kids again, standing at the very edge of the RV. I opened my arms to my sides and stood like this for a moment before jumping down again with a front flip. I was surrounded by children the moment my feet hit the ground, their cheering calling the attention of the whole camp.

I was laughing at their excitement, my cheeks warmer than usual, and I looked around to see the others looking at me. Close to the cars, Daryl and Merle were talking, or more like arguing if their body languages told me anything, and I felt weirdly disappointed that Daryl had not been looking to see what I did. Maybe he’d think I’m cool. And just like that I was 13 again hoping a boy would notice me. Stupid.

The children asked me to show more, how I’d learned that, if I could teach them, how many flips I could do and how high I could climb. Although I’d never had much contact with children in my life, I liked them; I found their pureness a blessing, their excitement before life refreshing, especially now with the world ending. I wanted to show them more, to play around with them, I really did, but my stomach seemed to find my running a flipping over completely abusive. It was turning again; bile rising to my throat, my head spinning a little.

Still smiling, I told the children they’d have to ask their parents if I could teach them, and that we’d talk again tomorrow. It hurt a little to see their disappointed faces as I walked away from them – nearly running – back towards the tent area. I passed right through it, towards the woods, now really running, a hand covering my mouth until I found herself far away enough from anyone to get my relief. After emptying further my already empty stomach, I fell on my ass on the wood’s ground, tears falling freely from my eyes, catching my breath. I didn’t even know I was crying. Does exhaustion make people cry? I felt tired to the bones and only wished to lie down right there and take a nap. I was shaking, stomach still turning, tears now falling for some other reason.

I knew she was fucked. If those symptoms really meant what I thought they meant, I was even more fucked than I’d have been back in the normal life. And, who was I kidding? I knew damn well what the symptoms meant. I was never one to get sick and feel this bad for nothing. Before I would have the help of the guy I had slept with – or I imagined I would, I didn’t really know him that well to know it – and I could make the choice to keep it or not, and if I didn’t want to keep it, I’d find a safe place to go and solve the problem. But now I wondered what my options were, but just as I started to think better into it, my body gave up on thinking and on sitting up and I felt herself falling back slowly to the ground, vision growing dark, thoughts failing my mind. All I was able to think was that I shouldn’t let myself fall asleep right there, it wasn’t safe, a walker could find me and eat me nobody would even know about it.

At least it would solve my tiny little problem.

So I forced myself up, ever so slowly, holding up to the tree and walked back to the camp, tree by tree, glad nobody was around. My orange tent seemed too damn far away and the minutes it took me to reach it and zip myself in feeling like a week. There were no more thoughts as I fell over the folding bed, finally permitting darkness to engulf my exhausted body and mind.


	9. Day 20

The sky had only just started to pale on the horizon when I left my tent. I had been asleep for many hours now, nearly passed out. I’d been feeling sick all those days, especially when night came – I surely had night sickness rather than morning sickness – and after throwing up alone in the woods, far from the camp, I’d stumble back to the tent and pass out until the next morning. Last night hadn’t been different. As I left the group that had been reunited around a small fire, not explaining to anyone what I’d do, I walked by Daryl, who was on watch duty just by the edge of the clearing. I gave him a small smile, which he didn’t give back. It was clear to me he knew something was wrong, and I am sure that if he weren’t on his post for a few more hours, he’d have gone after me. I was glad he didn’t. I didn’t want anyone thinking about what was happening to me; I wasn’t ready to tell anybody, to make it real, to admit it to myself. And maybe even more than that, I didn’t want to tell Daryl.

He and Merle were the only people I knew from the old life; the only people who had known me before, seen me young and growing up, who had some kind of history with me, even if a lame one. I didn’t worry about Merle knowing, because even though we could even be called friends now, I still didn’t forget the part he had always had in my life. What we had now didn’t erase the past. When he was present there, next door, he meant trouble. He meant offensive words when I didn’t deserve them – hell, when nobody deserved them! – so I didn’t actually give any a shit about what Merle thought of me. I knew I could deal with him; I had learned how to talk to him in those twenty days of this acquaintance-friendship.

But Daryl – Daryl was different, and I didn’t even know how. He’d never spoken offensive words at me – only eighteen years ago when his teenager version told me to fuck off, but that had been it – and he had always been a presence in my life, in the background, the boy from the other house, the one who’d disappear and resurge again on and on, a constant variable. Daryl was my only constant.

After the dead got up to eat the living, this frail and nearly inexistent relationship had shifted. He was there, I wouldn’t know how to explain it if I had to, but I knew he was _there_ , in the amplest meaning of the word. In those little more than two weeks, Daryl was the one who’d talk quietly to me, look at me to confirm decisions, tell me things with his eyes when he didn’t talk much with words. He was comfortable and, yes I dared to admit, he felt safe. There was something blooming there, I knew it, there was no denying, but ever so slowly, like the way you have to approach a wounded animal because they are just so scared and defensive. That’s the image Daryl reminded me of. I didn’t know much about his life even having been there for so long, but I knew it hadn’t been good, it had made him be as closed up as he was. So whatever was going to happen, if it was going to happen, would have to be slowly, no rush.

So I didn’t want to tell him yet, just not yet, but I knew that when I was ready to tell anyone, it’d have to be him, even fearing he would judge me, look down at me, or worse: pamper me. I didn’t know him well enough yet to foresee which one it would be, but I dreaded any option. So I just kept throwing up out of sight in the woods, sleeping early only because I’d worked a lot all day, pretending nothing was happening.

The camp was quiet as I left the tent area to reach the clearing. Dale was on top of the RV, T-Dog walking around the edge of the clearing – he nodded at me with a little smile for a good-morning – Ed was ahead of the cars on the edge of the road, and Merle on the other side of the clearing, opposite T-Dog. I knew Jim was down on the quarry keeping watch there. This shift of watch was nearly over and the five men would be replaced and would have to eat something before going to sleep. Carol and Miranda were up and about, preparing food for breakfast – I had previously set shifts for that too, where the two were together for the first meal, Lori and Amy for lunch and Morales and I for dinner. He was the only man on these shifts because no other could cook in a satisfactory way.

In a way, slowly and discreetly, I had organized small jobs for everyone in camp. The cooking shifts, a person responsible for never letting the boiled water to run out – Jim – four to keep picking the best twigs and dry leaves they could find so the fire would never die out – the children – and even laundry duties. I had tried to make it fifty-fifty, men and women, but my feminist way of thinking hadn’t been much appreciated, for my dismay. I couldn’t understand the concept that men couldn't wash their own fucking clothes. The men had turned their noses at the idea, and the women had decided they’d only stand in their way and do it all wrong and they’d have to do it all over again anyway. Defeated, I also excused myself from this duty. I’d never done laundry by hand in my life, I’ve always just had to toss them inside my old washer and that was it. Everybody else who could shoot or use a knife and felt safe facing walkers were on watch duties, which meant almost all of them, but this had been Shane’s responsibility. He organized the weapons, the shifts, the points were each one would be, all the strategy around it. I was glad because this invisible line Shane and I had drawn made things more peaceful and had us knocking heads less every day.

“Morning,” I said quietly as I approached Merle.

“Hey, what’s up, baby face?” he smiled as he threw away the butt of the cigarette he had been smoking.

“All quiet here?”

“Yeah, heard twigs all over the night but was a raccoon or something like it. Gonna get it later.”

“Right, you guys gonna go huntin’ today?”

“Yeah, bring some protein for these assholes.”

“Not gonna rest a little before leaving?”

“Yeah, couple of hours be enough.”

“’Kay,” I nodded. “Hey, go on, I’ll take the watch now.”

“Ya gonna? Thought it was china-boy.”

“Glenn’ll take Dale’s spot.”

Merle handed me the rifle he’d been holding for the past three hours and left, crossing paths with his brother on his way. They just nodded at each other and Daryl approached me, an old metal bowl in hand. I looked at him just as he handed it over.

“Mornin’.”

“Morning… Yeah, I don’t think I’m gonna eat,” I said refusing to take the bowl.

“Ya gotta,” he insisted. “Know you got sick last night. Canned meatballs didn’t agree with ya?”

“Uh, you saw that…” I moaned out instead of an answer.

“Not the first time. You ok?”

“Yeah, no, not sure…” I looked down, kicking the hard ground with the tip of my boot. “Didn’t know my stomach would bitch so much about all this fuckin’ change in eating habits.”

“Gotta get used to it, don’t see it turnin’ back to normal anytime soon,” and with that, he tried to hand me the bowl again. I took it this time, reluctantly, still not looking at him. “Ya sure that’s what the problem is? Ya been getting’ sick since the road.”

I looked up then to find his eyes glued on mine, searching for something. He had asked that in a low voice, stepping a little bit closer, head a little lowered to get almost in level with mine. I felt my mouth go suddenly dry – or at least drier than it was before – and swallowed, looking down at the bow, escaping his gaze.

“Yeah. What else would it be?”

“You tell me.”

He didn’t move or say anything else. Daryl just stood there, waiting for me to say something, and I almost did. I felt like I wanted to tell him now, just say it and get it over with, but my throat seemed to be reminding me of the reasons why I didn’t want to voice it. I couldn’t admit it, not yet.

“I’m fine, Daryl,” I finally said and mustered the courage to look up at him. “Really.”

For a moment he didn’t move, still fixing me a deep gaze, and finally nodded, really slowly, and straightened up. “Alright,” he said tightly before turning around and walking away without looking at me again, but saying “Eat. Ya sure as hell need it.”

I stood there looking at his retreating form for a long moment. Was it possible that he knew it? The way he asked like he wanted me to be the one to tell him as if he already knew but wanted me to trust him with the truth… Was that it? Was I not being discreet enough with my nightly episodes? I shook my head, looking down at the bowl – warmed up but already cooling brown beans and sweet corn stared back at me. No, he didn’t know. He didn’t even know me well; there was no way he had observed me that well. I looked up again, trying to see him one more time as if this would give me an answer, but didn’t find him. Was he observing me that closely? Did he care enough to do that?

I ate half of the food, only because I knew I needed it, but my stomach refused to eat more than that. I stood there on guard for nearly three hours as the rest of the people on camp started their days until Jackie came to release me.

In the tent area, I found Merle waking up from the nap he had taken after his watch and breakfast, and Daryl handing him his share of guns.

“Any special request from the woods, pumpkin?” Merle said when he saw me approach.

“I would like veal if you please.”

Behind him, Daryl snorted. “Did ya just do a British accent?”

“Shit, did I?” damn, I seemed to already be tired if I was cracking bad jokes.

I stayed with them until they had all they needed in backpacks to stay in the woods for a few days to hunt, and were ready to go.

“Hey, you realize it’s the first time in twenty days that I’ll be away from you guys?” I asked out of the blue before I could think of it, after being quiet for a moment when I just watched the Dixons organize their things and talk about the supplies they would need. As I said it, I felt my cheeks get a little pink. If I had stopped to think for just a moment, that was not something I would ever voice. Damn feelings.

“Ya countin’ days?” Merle laughed.

“Yeah, this is day twenty of the new fuckin’ world,” and I waved a hand, “Guess I’ll just stop doing it eventually.”

“Ya gonna miss us aren’t ya?” Merle said as he started to retreat. “Jus’ don’t fall in love, honey pie!”

I laughed and, when he looked back, gave him my middle finger, making him laugh more and send me one himself. Daryl was shaking his head at our interaction, not moving. Smiling, I looked at him and forced myself not to go all serious and keep smiling, but unconsciously my arms crossed over my stomach.

“I’ll see if I find your veal,” Daryl said quietly, a shy little smile playing on his lips, making the little pink in my cheeks grow a little warmer. My smile widened.

“Be careful out there, is all I ask,” I said and saw him frown slightly, he seemed surprised. “Ya know, there walkers in the woods…”

“I got it,” he answered dismissively.

“I know,” and I took a step closing most of the space between us, arms falling to my sides and a hand reaching out for his. I took a light hold of his wrist and saw him look down at my hand and back up at me quickly. “Just… Don’t die. Ok?”

He didn’t answer, instead he started to bite on the skin of his lower lip, and after a moment he nodded slowly.

“I won’t,” he promised quietly.

“Good,” I answered in a whisper, only then letting go of his wrist. Daryl took a step back, eyes still on me, and then turned around to walk away, quick steps, towards where Merle had disappeared into the woods.

Ok, I was not kidding myself. There was a moment, right there. Wasn’t there? Damn, I wish I had a friend there right now, someone girl who’d look at me and say there really had been a moment there – but I had never had that friend in my life – just to let me know I was not seeing things, that this had not been my imagination.

Shit. I was definitely fucked. Because I really, really wished I had not imagined this.

* * *

“Ok, now, after taking these calming, deep breaths, you just have to relax and empty your mind,” Andrea tried saying in a quiet, calm voice while I sat by her side, Amy and Lori also around. She opened one eye then, looking at the others. “Or at least it’s what the instructor said. I was never able to do it.”

“Oh, that’s bullshit,” I uncrossed my legs and leaned back, resting on my hands over the rock we were sitting on, by the lake. “How can a person just think of nothing?”

“I did it once,” Amy said, also moving from her meditation position and standing up. “I spent nearly five minutes thinking of nothing, just relaxing, until I noticed I had been thinking about my breath and how long had it been and about my itching nose all the while.”

“I did yoga before Carl was born,” Lori told us. “But never really went into meditation. I don’t think it would be useful now, you know, these days.”

“Yeah, I really don’t wanna be sitting on the woods with my eyes closed and mind faraway when a walker comes over. These eyes are staying wide open,” I pointed briefly at my own eyes.

“Oh, by the way,” Amy called. “I’ve heard you calling them _walkers_ this whole time. How did this name come about?”

I rolled my neck from side to side, listening to its pop before starting to explain. I told the other three women about how I’d been hiding in the Dixon’s house for a while when we saw a neighbor of said name wander around the street, dead, and after that started calling all of them _walkers_.

“Wow… It’s kinda weird imagining being stuck in a house with those two for as long as you did,” Andrea opined.

“Why’s that?” I asked with a frown.

“I don’t know. Nothing against them, it’s just… They are a little…” the blonde woman thought for a moment before finishing. “Strange.”

“Strange?” I asked for confirmation. “What’s strange about them?”

“Well –”

“It’s nothing personal,” Amy cut her older sister off, trying to help her. “It’s just that they don’t really talk to anybody else here. Just you.”

“Yes, they’re always on the edges of the group, you know?” Andrea kept talking. “I mean, Daryl barely speaks to anyone, and Merle, when he does, it’s to be… Well, snarky.”

“Snarky?” I asked permitting the frown to fade away and give place to an amused smile. “You mean ‘ _asshole_ ’, right?”

“Well, you said it,” Lori commented.

“They ain’t that bad,” I started. “They’re rednecks, ya know, they got their own ways. Merle really is an asshole and a racist… And misogynist. And a drug addict.”

“Wow, is there something good about him?” Andrea laughed but sounded worried at the same time.

“Yes. He’s loyal. He’s been looking after me since the first day, and even though he’s always been a jerk to me all the years I’ve known him, he never crossed a line. Never touched me. I didn’t in the beginning, but I feel safe around him now,” I paused, impressed by my own words and how honest they had been.

“Alright. What about Daryl?” Amy asked seeming more interested, her body turning a little more towards me.

“Uh, well… You girls might not believe it, but Daryl is actually really kind,” I smiled. “He’s got this hardened exterior, he’s always had, but he seems to be a good guy. I guess he is, you know.”

“You guess?” Lori asked. “Did you say you know them for a long time, how many years again?”

“Eighteen. I’ve been their neighbor for this long, but we’ve never been friends. Never talked before that day, actually. We just ended up together by chance.”

“Oh. Oh, so you mean…” Andrea started, paused to look at her sister and then again at me. You and Daryl, you’re not together?” she seemed to find this idea strange.

“Together? You mean, together, _together_?” I asked and at Andrea’s confirmation and Amy’s emphatic not, I continued. “No. We’re barely friends… I mean, I guess we are _now_ , but it’s been less than a month.”

“But do you like him?” Amy questioned yet again.

“Like this? Oh, uh…” damn the questioning. I never saw this conversation taking this direction. “I care about him, of course, but there’s nothing happening in that way.”

There, it was not a lie. Nothing had ever happened, and this was true. Didn’t have to say I didn’t feel anything, because _that_ would have been a lie. Andrea and Amy shared a look that didn’t pass unnoticed, both of them going quiet.

“What?” I asked. “What is it?”

“Nothing,” Amy answered a little too fast.

“Amy has a crush on him,” Andrea told them.

“Andrea!!”

“You have a crush on Daryl?” Lori asked seemingly holding in a laugh.

“It’s no big deal! I just… I think he’s cute.”

“Cute? Really?” Lori meddled in again. “Daryl, cute?”

“Alright, I mean _hot_!” Amy confessed, her cheeks going pink, hands moving up to cover her face.

“Well, that’s more like it.” Andrea agreed. “See, the guy’s single, isn’t that what you wanted to know?”

“It doesn’t matter, ok?” Amy uncovered her face. “It’s not like I’ll do anything about it. A guy like that would never look at a girl like me.”

“Well, you don’t know that…” I said quietly, a bit shocked at these confessions. “He might. That is, I mean... How old are you again?”

“Twenty-four.”

 _What?!_ “Oh. Alright, you look a lot younger... He’s not that much older, I think about fifteen years.”

“I told you, it doesn’t matter, nothing is gonna happen!” Amy assured again. “I just think he’s hot, that’s all,” and then she pointed a finger sharply at her older sister, “Andrea thinks the same thing about Shane!”

“Amy!!”

* * *

As the sun started to set on the horizon, coloring it beautifully with pink and orange shades, the fire that centered the clearing roared high, crackling the twigs and dry leaves the children had collected earlier. Carol was around it, setting cookers ready for Morales and I to start preparing the group’s night meal. Silently and with her head down, she worked not paying people around any attention, not noticing the ones who were standing guard, or the children running around and giggling without a single worry in life or the four women who approached the clearing carrying two buckets filled with water each. Carol only looked up at them when some of the men ran towards us to offer and take the heavy buckets from their hands. They gladly handed them out, happily being released from the weight; except for me.

“Now ya’ll offer?” I asked and kept walking, leaving Shane with his hands extended trying to take the containers. “Don’t touch the buckets, I got it!”

I carried them over to the fire, now along with the men, and placed them on the ground.

“Do you really have to do it by hand?” Carol asked me as the others moved away. “Can’t you just take a car down there?”

“I don’t wanna spend any more gas than we have to,” I explained rolling my shoulder muscles to relieve the tension. “Cars should all be ready to go if we have to.”

“Right. But next time at least get the men to do that. Those are pretty heavy,” Carol struggled with the last sentence as she lifted one metal bucket to place it over the grill that had already been placed over the fire.

I barely heard her last few words. My eyes were trained on Carol’s forearm; the long-sleeved shirt she had been wearing unintentionally rolled up. There, over Carol’s pale and delicate skin, four angry purple marks shaped perfectly as fingers.

“Carol?” I reached out instinctively and took Carol’s hand on mine. “What’s this?”

Carol looked down and immediately flinched, understanding what I had been looking at. She took her hand away from me and lowered her sleeve quickly, blue, watery eyes darting around checking if anyone else had seen in.

“It’s nothing,” she urgently whispered. “Really, I just hurt myself –”

“When did he do this?” I ignored her tentative excuse. “Gotta been last night, right? They’re fresh.”

“Sam, really, it’s nothing. I was my fault.”

“Yeah, and what did you do? Didn’t iron his shirt right?” I also whispered, but anger was clear even then.

“No! Sam, just let it go, ok? I’m the one who annoyed him –”

“You _annoyed_ him?” I repeated, outraged. “He must have done it pretty quietly, huh? So no one else would hear it?”

“Sam, please, listen to me,” Carol’s whisper now sounded like a plea. “Just let it go. Please. I don’t want a scene, I don’t want to make things worse.”

I took a moment to breathe, my anger tightening my throat dangerously. I saw terror in Carol’s eyes, and knew that acting on my outrage would really only make things worse at the moment.

“This man is nothing without you, Carol,” I announced instead of running to Ed’s tent and beating the fuck out of him. “Not a fuckin’ thing. He made you think that you need him, but you _don’t_. He is the one who needs you. You’d be just fine without him. In the past, you could very well leave, find help, get a job. It wouldn’t be easy, but nothing in life really is, right? And now, you need him even less. You have this whole group to look after you and Sofia. You got _me_ , alright? You don’t need him,” I took a hard breath and an angry laugh came out of my lips. “He, on the other hand… What would this useless fucker be without you, Carol? If you left him, he’d starve. He’d stink, live out of a can of beer and cup noodles, and he would never, _ever again_ , find another woman who’d even look at him twice. He’d die alone and miserable while you rebuild your life.” I looked around and gestured around the camp, moving on to an astonished looking Carol. “And here? He’s only here because of you and your girl. Nobody here likes him. Shane didn’t want him to come. If it wasn’t for you, he’d be out on the road, alone, eaten by walkers. He owes you _everything_ , Carol, _every fuckin’ little thing,_ now and then. He made you believe that you need him so you wouldn’t leave because he is a fucking useless piece of shit.” I smiled despite Carol’s wide eyes and opened mouth. “You have no idea of the power you got over him.”

At the end of my speech, Carol blinked and looked down, wordless. I took a step back, staring to move away, and Carol looked at me again, still not saying anything.

“I can teach you self defense if you want. You and Sofia. You don’t have to go through it anymore, girl. Just say the word.”

With that, I turned around and walked away from Carol. I hoped, for Ed’s sake, that he didn’t cross my path anytime soon.


	10. Day 24

The thick patch of woods around camp was lit at noon, the high temperature and hot beams of sun amongst the tree leaves making the wildlife seem to be hiding, seeking refuge. Glenn wiped off a drop of sweat that threatened to fall into his right eye with the back of his hand, his baseball cap all but forgotten at camp; it only made his head hotter, he’d told me. By his side I considered, not for the first time, getting rid of the dreadlocks. The thick rolls of hair glued to my sweaty arms. One of them got tangled on the shoulder gun holster I still wore since I’d found it, and I had to stop to remove it.

“Seems to be clear,” he told me as I resumed walking. “We must be nearly out of the perimeter.”

“Few more yards,” I informed. “We use to check up until that big oak. I like to stand there for a while to see if the woods beyond are really clear.”

“Right. But you know, with how fast they walk, they’d take like a day to reach the camp from this point.”

“Some of them can be faster. I guess it depends on when –”

I stopped suddenly, a hand rising to stop Glenn from walking ahead of me. He had heard it too, though. Steps rustled the tree leaves ahead of us, stumbling shapes slowly becoming visible amongst the trees. Two females and one male walker growled hungrily looking at us.

“I think that one was at a party,” Glenn whispered as he pointed at one of the females with his knife. She wore a black strapless dress; a fancy pearl necklace was still around her neck, now dyed in red; one of her feet was bare, the other had a high heel silver shoe still strapped to her ankle, making it ever harder for her to walk.

“That’s why I never wore high heels,” I told Glenn as I also unsheathed my knife and took the first step towards the three dead people.

“Whoa, that’s a big guy,” Glenn said impressed as he reached the male, his putrid fingers reaching out for him only to find the empty air as he took a step back and to the side. The size of the dead man made him luckily slower, making it surprisingly easy for Glenn to reach up and stab him into his ear hole.

As I approached the two females, one was quickly kicked on the chest and stumbled back, falling on her bottom and groaning desperately. It would have been funny if I wasn’t too busy to give it any thought; I was fighting the dressed up walker who had taken hold of one of my dreadlocks and was pulling it with more force than her decaying body let show. Ignoring the pain on my scalp, I managed to reach for the walker's head and bury the knife to the handle into her left eye. I nearly fell with the walker but managed to remain standing and untangle my hair from its hand – one of the fingers threatened to get unattached from the hand – in time to look around and see that Glenn had his foot trapped under the body of the walker he had just killed. It didn’t look like he had been hurt, but he was struggling to set himself free. The second female walker had stood up by now but didn’t have time to even try to attack. My knife, still coated with the other’s brain matter, was shoved strongly into her temple.

“You alright?” I asked Glenn as the walker fell heavily to the ground.

Glen stopped struggling, breathed out, head hanging a little in shame. “Yeah… He just… Fell on me.”

“Shit, Glenn, gotta be careful with the dead weight,” I said as I approached him and couldn’t help myself but laughing, “Hah, dead weight, got it?”

He also laughed despite himself. “Yeah, got it. That was… Terrible!”

Letting it go I bent down to help him push the big walker away. “You’re lucky you ain’t alone.”

“Yeah, I know,” he mumbled as he rolled his foot, testing for any sign of pain. Satisfied it wasn’t hurt, he got up while I cleaned my blade on the fancy black dress of the dead walker. He stared at the three of them for a moment in silence before asking “What do you reckon it is?”

“What?” I straightened up and turned to him sheathing the knife again.

“This… _Thing_. Decease, virus, whatever. Nobody seems to have any kind of explanation.”

“We can only wonder… Don’t seem natural to me, though.”

“What do you mean?” he asked as we resumed walking.

“I don’t know, I don’t think nature would work like that. There’s a reason why things die in nature, the freakin’ circle of life and all that? I don’t see a reason for the dead to get back to life, I mean, happening naturally.”

“You mean you think someone did this? Like in a lab?”

“Yeah, why not?”

“Like terrorists?”

“Who knows? But well, if terrorists did this, they probably regret it by now. I mean, if this is really worldwide.”

“Must be. If it wasn’t, we’d be getting help from other countries already,” he paused. “Right?” and looked at me. I answered him only by returning his skeptical look, an eyebrow raised. “Well, so if it is manmade and if it is in the whole world… Who’d find the cure? If there’s any, I mean.”

“Who’d find it if the ones who should be looking for it are possibly eating each other as we speak?” and I raised a finger to make a point, “and not in a good way.”

“It’s hard to imagine that everything is really over,” Glenn spoke gloomily. “Life as we knew, I mean.”

“Is it really?” I asked just as we reached the oak tree and stopped walking. “Things were going to shit for a long time, Glenn. Violence, racism, wars, hunger. Of course, there were still good things but… Maybe it was just so bad that there was no returning point, and we, simple people, didn’t even know how terrible things were. This thing that is happening sucks, it’s a fucking apocalypse, no good in that, but ya know… Many of the bad things might be over too.”

Glenn nodded his head, arms crossed. “Like pollution, pesticides, poisoned water, global warming, the next world war…”

“Yeah, there won’t be enough people to ruin the planet anymore. But what I mean is… We know nothing, right? Miserable little human beings who don’t understand the reason for anything in life. And we probably won’t know. There ain’t much we can do other than move on, keep living, keep fighting. Is what animals have been doing in nature since the beginning, we’ll just keep doing it.”

“Keep fighting,” Glenn repeated. “Build a life in this new world?”

“What other choices we got? Give up? Lie down and cry? If we didn’t give up when facing the other problems we’ve all had in life, why would we now? I’ve been through shit, Glenn. I don’t know your story, but I know nobody’s life is easy. We all are just gonna have to suck it up and move the fuck on.”

Glenn had gone silent for long minutes before speaking again. I let him think, his face showed how surprised he had been to hear my thoughts. It might have been hard to digest, but I knew I was right, because the more I thought, the hardest it was to find something about the old world that I would miss. Well, I would miss the supermarkets and all the available food and not having people try to feed on me, of course. But what in my past routine was so good that I would desire to have back? To wake up before sunset to go serve coffee all day? Run from the diner to the community school and study things I knew I was never going to really use in real life until I fell asleep over the books? Take the bus late at night and walk home in fear of being robbed, assaulted, raped? To dream of the weekend when I could have a day off to go running in the woods and practice my free running with sport colleagues? I knew the colleagues were most definitely gone, but to run on the woods and jump up and down things was still pretty much possible, if not needed.

“We must plan things then,” the young man by my side cut the silence, removing me from my thoughts just as my mind reached the child I assumed I was having. No time to think about that now, though. “With this group, we can do quite a lot, I bet.”

“Like what?” I asked. I had my own opinions about what we could or should do, but I wanted to hear what others thought. My favorite thought is to fortify an area around us. Like, really close the space with fences or walls. Stopping any walker would get to us and no people to rob our stuff.”

“First thing that came to my mind too,” Glenn agreed with me. “But how do we build fences? Wood?”

Glenn and I spent long minutes discussing it, just throwing ideas up in the air, one more unlikely than the other. We knew the notion of physically closing the area around was good but extremely hard to comply.

“I just feel like this ain’t where we’re gonna stay,” I confessed after we sadly understood just how tied our hands were. “It’s too open; too close to the city, too uncomfortable to be for a long time. But it ain’t no good to think about this now, you know, ‘cause it’s working so far.”

“Yeah, you’re right, but what has to happen for it _not_ to work anymore? Walkers?”

“I don’t worry about walkers, honestly. What worries me more now is that the food is running short. We’re twenty people eating twice a day; there’s children growing up, how am I supposed to feed everyone for long?”

“Your friends are out hunting, aren’t they?”

“Yeah, and they’ll come back with some meat, but I ain’t sure it’ll be enough. And if they bring a big hog or dear or something, we gonna have to cook it all or we’ll lose the meet. How long’s it gonna last? Two, three days?”

“With this heat, it would rot even before that long,” Glenn informed with an apologetic look on his face. “But we could salt it.”

“Come again?” I turned to him.

Glenn proceeded to tell me, more excitedly by the second, that he had read on the internet something about the process of salting meat to make it last, and that this process could preserve it for as long as months.

“Only thing, though,” Glenn concluded, his smile dying out, “is that we’d need to have quite a lot of salt. I mean, many pounds, you know.”

Crossing my arms, I went silent, Glenn following my lead as I turned around and started to slowly walk back towards the camp. I knew where we could go and try to find what we would need, but I didn’t feel like it was a good option. It seemed too risky, and none of us knew how things were back in Atlanta after the bombing. There was to guarantee we would ever find anything useful there.

“Did you know Shane has been teaching some of us how to shoot?” Glenn cut the silence after we had walked back about halfway to camp. “We’ve been going away a few miles so the noise won’t attract walkers to the camp. I had learned before, but now I’ve trained and he said I’m doing pretty well.”

“I knew that. I’m the one who suggested you’d do it far from here,” I said walking but stopped right then and turned to Glenn. “Why do you say that?”

He had a determined face as he took a breath before saying “I am ready to go make a run to Atlanta.”

I only stared at him for a moment, eyeing him carefully as I looked for some sign of uncertainty, but other than Glenn’s gentle eyes and slightly raised eyebrows, I found none.

“You sure?”

“I am. Remember what I told you when we met on the road? I know Atlanta like my own hand. I used to deliver pizzas all over the city and –”

“And ya run pretty fast,” I finished and Glenn just smiled. “I remember.”

“So?”

“I worry, Glenn. You’d be alone out there with walkers all over. At least take someone with you.”

“I don’t think so, Sam,” he answered firmly, but still with his gentle tone. “I’ll be faster alone.”

“I feel responsible,” I told him crossing my arms, sounding like a confession. “I’m the one who brought you in. You’re in this group ‘cause of me and ya’ll be out there risking your life to get food for the group. Ya get it?”

He nodded with a tight smile. “I get it, Sam, but you’ve just said yourself. New life, we all have to face it? If this may be my job in the group, then I’ll do it. And I’ll be careful, I promise.”

After a moment, though reluctant, I said “Alright…”. Glenn smiled more openly now, glad. “But come back, ya hear me? In one piece. And bring food. And any sorta meds you can find.”

“And salt!” he completed with a laugh.

We both turned and restarted walking to the camp. Glenn proceeded to tell me what he thought he should take with him; a gun and ammo, more than one blade, food for at least a whole day out. I told him it all could be arranged, and with all agreed as we reached the clearing once again, I told him he’d leave in the morning and Glenn, happy with himself, left to start separating his stuff.

There, overlooking the clearing and the automatic motion the group seemed to have acquired in the past days, I had to double-check to see if Merle and Daryl were back from their hunting, since Merle’s thundering, rude voice rang inside my head. They were not back yet, though. “ _…don’t wanna be responsible for all those shitheads. Wouldn’t wanna be in your shoes if they start seein’ you as the leader…_ ” he had told me, and now I wondered when the hell had Merle Dixon turned wise. Glenn had just asked me permission to do something – something _important_ – and I had considered, thought of pros and cons, and authorized him. Why hadn’t he asked Shane, when the two of them along with some other members of the group used to spend time together when training shooting – perfectly good opportunities to talk about it?

“ _Every pack need a leader, sweetheart._ ”

* * *

Ignoring my rolling, angry stomach, threatening to make me waste my breakfast, I slowly sipped out of an old, metal jug of water, careful breaths until I felt like it was safe to walk around again.

“Hey, Sam!” I heard and turned to look up at Dale on top of his RV. He pointed out in the direction of the woods. “Your friends are back.”

Smiling as a thank you, suddenly quite happy, I turned to where he had pointed, still unable to see them for a moment, but after a few seconds, they appeared amongst the trees. First, there was Merle, his clothes so dirty they even looked darker, strings of tied up squirrels hanging from his shoulders and, behind him, Daryl carried a dear over his shoulders, his face sweaty and dirty. As I approached smiling, I saw Daryl’s eyes dance around the camp, looking for something until they fell on me. I could have sworn I saw a smile on his lips, but it was quick, his face returning to the same closed, sulky one I knew. Still smiling, I headed to where they were both now being greeted by the better part of the group, cheering the prospect of having fresh meat tonight.

“Look at ya’ll fuckin’ vultures!” Merle was laughing when I got there. “Ya’ll never direct a fuckin’ word to me, but now I got the meat! Now ya’ll my best friends, ain’t ya?”

“We’re just glad you two got good result doing your part to get the camp going on, is all,” Shane was explaining as he took the strings of squirrel from Merle.

“Yeah, but ya’ll get to clean ‘em up,” Daryl said as he dropped the dead dear heavily to the ground.

“Hey, bro, old-world had gold-diggers; we got ourselves some meat-diggers now!” Merle said and laughed aloud of his own joke.

“Don’t be a jerk, Dixon,” I told him as I stood by them.

“Hey, hey sugar face!” Merle said happily as wrapped an arm around me. “Miss me, didn’t ya?”

“Fuck, Merle, you stink!” and I started distributing slaps to get him away. “Fuck off!”

“Ya love me!” he said letting me go. “I know ya do, ya loved me before I got ya meet, unlike all there meat-diggers!”

“Yeah, yeah, you believe whatever the fuck gets ya going, now get outta here and go wash.”

“What won’t I do for ya, sweetheart?” he said as he turned to go down to the lake.

“Welcome back anyway, stinky!” I laughed as he left.

As I turned to talk to Daryl, all the other people were already walking away, taking all the dead animals with them. Daryl gave me a tiny, shy smile.

“Not smelling much better,” he told me.

I leaned a little closer and sniffed the air, making a face and getting away from him again, “You damn fuckin’ right!” and I laughed as he raised his arm and took a sniff at his own armpit, making the same face I had. “Ya been out long,” I damped it down because it really didn’t matter. “Good to see you.”

Daryl nodded but didn’t answer. He only started walking in the same direction Merle had gone and I stepped by his side. “How’s things ‘round here? Good?”

“Quiet, I guess. Few walkers around the perimeter but we’ve been catching them before they get here… But the food’s starting to run low. Hey, do you know something about preserving meat?”

As we crossed the camp and descended to the bottom of the quarry, Daryl told me how to do it with salt and how this was, due to the circumstances, our only preserving option. If Glenn didn’t find salt enough to do so, Daryl would have to go away hunting with Merle much more often.

“Nah, no fuckin’ way I’ll do that. Can’t be alone with Merle that long.”

“How come?”

“Not used to it... He wasn’t around much. Every now and then he’d just vanish and not come back for a long time.”

“Yeah, I know… Was kinda noticeable when he was gone, quieter ‘round there. But why did he go away so often?”

“He’s got issues.”

“Yeah, I figured… But he’d just… Up and leave?”

“Yeah, most times without even saying goodbye; just left me there to handle it alone.”

“Handle it?” I asked looking at him, still slowly descending the patch. “What did you have to handle?”

Daryl shook his head, a bitter, little smile on his lips. “Forget it.”

“Ok… Well… For what’s worth, I also know all about handling things on my own,” I saw Daryl look at me then, curiosity in his blue eyes. Looking at him as well, I smiled. “I’ll tell if you tell.”

He held in a laugh, his smile enlarging, “Not a chance.”

“Alright then,” and we were silent for a little longer. “Hey, uh, how is he? I mean, with the drug thing? He’s been using that blue crystal he got?”

“Bit, not much. He’s trying to cut out. He’s been weird ‘cause of that.”

“Why’s he cutting out?”

“Well, ya know, if he’s high and a bunch of walkers come up he won’t have the reflexes to deal. Says he knows that, so he’s got to try and be alert.”

“He’s never been more right,” I agreed just as we reached the lake and see, yards away, that Merle is washing waist-deep in the water. “We gotta keep an eye on him… Withdrawal won’t be easy if he cuts back altogether.”

* * *

On top of Dale’s RV, I stood observing the camp beneath me. Night had fallen and, with it, the sleepy silence of the post-dinner relaxation; it had been the first one with meat in a few days. It’d been amazing, Carol had taken over dinner tonight and cooked us all an incredible deer pot roast. The Dixons were praised again, to Merle amusement, and Carol was too. It had been a good night. I watched as Lori and Carol quietly left the clearing, each one bringing her child to the tents. Around camp men on their posts keeping watch; in the center Shane kicked dirt from the ground to the fire, putting it out. I breathed deeply but quietly, relieved to be feeling quite well after dinner. No night-sickness today, and I wondered if I was far along enough to be out of that phase already. Doing quick math, I concluded it probably wasn’t the case. Maybe I’d feel sick in an hour or so, which was a shame because dinner had been amazing.

Turning around, I took a seat by Dale on the second folding chair, silence claiming us for a moment.

“Glenn’s going to Atlanta in the morning,” I quietly told the older man, who turned his head to look at me.

“Do you think it’s safe?” he asked carefully.

“No. I don’t think anything is really safe now… But it’s needed.”

“Can he pull it out?”

“Yeah, I think so. He’s confident, he can shoot, run fast. I’m giving him the chance.”

“Chance of what?”

“Of feeling useful,” I looked at him too. “We need food and other stuff he’ll be looking for, but I think it’s mostly about him feeling he’s needed. You know? I think we all need it.”

“You’re absolutely right,” Dale nodded, relaxing into his chair again and looking out. “Why do you think I stand here looking out for the better part of the day? I think it’s what I can do, my part. I’m not so good at killing them; maybe not fast enough.”

“I know…” I went quiet for a moment, both of us looking down and around. “Your lookout is crucial just like the job each one here’s doing. We need the guards around camp, we need the kids gathering twigs for the fire, we need Shane teaching people how to shoot and organizing the patrols, and Merle and Daryl going hunting, Carol and the others cooking and keeping water clean… I’m just… Still not so sure what _I’m_ doing.”

While I spoke, I wondered why I was talking about it. I liked Dale but had never really sat down to talk to him. Perhaps there was something about him being the eldest of camp, with a wise look, that made people want to open up to him. I’d seen others doing it before. Andrea was the one who did it most; I noticed how they had become friends since the beginning.

“You’re not sure what you’re doing?” Dale asked, a tone somewhat unbelieving on his voice. “Sam, you’re –” he stopped to laugh a little “You’re leading us!”

I stared at him, mouth agape for a moment. Damn, that was said. Seems like it wasn’t real until someone voiced it. I was leading them. I was leading a group. Was I fucking leading the group?!

I shook my head forcefully, trying to make my brain restart, and leaned further back into my chair. “Fuck, Dale, I don’t know how it happened. Why? I mean it, why did I become the – the _leader_ of the group? I’ve never done anything like that in my life, I was a fuckin’ waitress! How – how did that happen?”

Dale shook his head slowly, still smiling. “Since the road, before we all left looking for a place, you stated your opinions and they all made sense, you faced what was to come and thought about what would be best for all, and what I liked the most, personally, you stood up for Shane, who had taken the decisions for himself with his _‘I’m a cop’_ speech. I mean, don’t get me wrong I respect and have always respected cops, and I like Shane, but his attempted leadership was all but forced upon us. Yours wasn’t.”

“I just had common sense, Dale. I don’t think anything I said or did was out of what would be right, no matter who was making the decision. Just… Yeah, common sense. And as for Shane, I – I mean, I never let myself scare by men, you know… Imposing, stronger, kinda sexist men. I stood up for my opinions and the rest just came with it.”

“So,” he made a gesture with his hands as if he was showing me something, “you’ve just explained exactly why you’re at the head of the camp, Sam. Common sense, the best for all first. I, personally, would choose you over him without a second thought exactly because of that. And I know it must be scary being in this position all of a sudden, during the apocalypse, it’s quite the responsibility. But don’t forget than other than the four children, the rest of us are all adults who are also capable of having common sense. You’re not alone.”

I said nothing after that. I didn’t know what to say. I continued observing the camp with Dale for a few more minutes, thoughtful. Merle’s words kept coming back to my mind and scared me, but Dale’s thoughts helped her keep balance and not freak out.

Just common sense, it was all I needed.


	11. Day 60

The way the camp looked now made perfectly clear that long weeks had gone by. After being there for almost exactly two months, the group of twenty had made the clearing, woods, and tents home. The RV had the plastic roof constantly up, folding tables and chairs under it with their aluminum feet stuck into the dry earth. Someone had placed wildflowers in plastic cups, trying to make things feel homey; by one side, lines were extended from tree to tree, wet clothes and bed clothing hanging from them; improvised stoves on tripods hung above the constant fires; tents had been rearranged to our comfort, clothes hanging and pairs of shoes left in front of each.

Routine had been settled. Shane and I had separated with clear limits what was each one’s job – Shane still took care of camp safety, organizing lookout shifts and guns, while I took care of pretty much everything else, like food and water supply, organization and maintenance of our gear, both previous possessions and new stuff Glenn would usually bring back with him from his weekly runs to Atlanta – but mainly, I took care of the people around. I had never known before, but I seemed to be good at listening and understanding problems they all would present to me, and with my common sense, I was quite capable of finding solutions or at least helping them find it themselves. I still didn’t feel comfortable giving others comfort. I wasn’t a hugger or spoke softly: I was more the tough love kind of person, who would always be honest and give my opinion, no matter what it was.

I still hadn’t lost the habit of keeping track of time. I knew exactly which day into the apocalypse we were – 59 days – and how far along I was with the accidental, unwanted pregnancy – 10 weeks. Still keeping it a secret, I had been feeling better these days, the nightly sickness reducing day by day to nearly nothing. I did feel hungrier now, but forced myself not to eat more than the others. It wouldn’t be fair. Conscious that I wouldn’t be able to keep it a secret for too long, I planned on how I was going to bring it up to Daryl, my decision to tell him first still firm, but still couldn’t picture a good situation to do that. I could feel my lower belly a bit grown, but it still didn’t show under my clothes.

With nearly two months into the end of the world, a great part of the days was spent with hopeful attempts to get news, to get some contact over the radio, hoping Glenn would return from his last run bringing good news. None of it ever happened, though. The static of the radio was always our only response, and Glenn would always answer my hopeful looks with a shake of his head, tight lips, telling me he found nothing. He did bring back things – food, clothes, gas, he’d been able to find the salt, but not as much as we’d hoped, and everything he thought could be useful. All, except for information and rescue.

The day before the next run Glenn would make to Atlanta, he gathered Shane and I so he could talk to us about it. He reminded us what he had informed the last time he returned; he had found an abandoned department store that was still completely untouched, filled with clothes, kitchen apparels, camping, fishing and hunting gear, canned and dry food and maybe even more useful things he couldn’t spare the time to take a look. This week, he planned on going specifically there, to this store, and thought maybe he could use an extra pair of hands.

“Do you have someone in mind?” Shane asked him.

“One of you guys, maybe?” Glenn told him looking back and forth between us, a little unsure.

“Nah, I ain’t going,” Shane crossed his arms above puffed chest, a definite tone on his voice. “Not leaving camp alone, all the people and stuff. I ain’t going.”

“I’ll go,” I said with the same tone. Shane looked sharply at me. “I think we all gotta know how to deal with a run, ya know? Actually, Glenn, I’ve been thinking… You’re pretty good at it, I think you’ve killed more walkers than any of us at this point. Maybe you could take more of us with you.”

“Oh, Sam, I don’t know…”

“Look, I know you said you’d rather go alone,” I interrupted him. Shane still had his arms crossed, just listening. “And I know you handle yourself well, but we all have to be able to do it. To go on runs, to get things back to camp, and most importantly, to defend ourselves and the others. We’re not developing any of those abilities by staying in camp mainly sitting around all day.”

“She’s got a point there, man,” Shane opined. “It’s better if more than just one person’s able to do it, we could have more than a group going on runs at a time, keeping things in motion.”

“What do you think?” I asked Glenn, a bit surprised Shane was agreeing with me so readily. “You up for taking a group with you this time?”

“Alright…” he agreed reluctantly and then added a little bit more certain: “But you gotta make it clear to anyone who goes that I’ll be in charge. They’ll have to listen to me, if I say we move on, we move on. If I say we retreat, we retreat.”

“You got it,” I nodded sharply. “I’ll be there anyway if anyone gives you a hard time.”

“Good.” Shane uncrossed his arms. “I’ll go ask people who want to go. How many do you think?” he asked both Glenn and me.

“Uh, I – Five. Yeah, about five. No, I don’t know. Less than ten.”

“Glenn,” I reached for his shoulder, “you’ll be this run’s leader. Make a decision and stay firm in it.”

“Sorry, yeah, uh… Six or seven. Yeah, seven, at most.”

“Seven it is,” Shane mumbled before turning around and leaving.

As Shane walked around camp talking to each adult personally, I went back to the tents to gather a few of my stuff in a backpack to get ready to go the next morning. I was met by Daryl, returning from the most secluded area of the woods, where they had dig holes in the most sanitary way possible, and told him about the recent decision.

“You sure ya gonna go?” he asked me carefully.

“Yeah, I’m sure. Why?”

“’Cause you was sick ‘til two days ago.”

“I’m fine now, Daryl.”

“Still think ya shouldn’t go.”

“I’ll be fine, don’t worry.”

He stopped talking for a moment to watch me dive into my tent and return after a few seconds with an empty backpack in hand.

“Then I’m going too.”

“Didn’t you say you were going hunting?”

“It can wait.”

“It can’t, Daryl, you know it can’t. We need food, real meat, not the canned crap we may find out there, and until you come back the dried meat will be over,” I saw Daryl start to speak in answer, but cut him out. “You know Merle can’t go hunting alone. He’s not fine, he’s withdrawing, and he’ll want to do something. He’ll want to go hunting or to go to this run, either way, he shouldn’t be alone. One of us should be with Merle; the others can’t deal with him.”

“So we gotta babysit on a fuckin’ grown-ass man now?” Daryl asked bitterly, and I’m sure he knew the answer to that question was yes. “I don’t like it, Sam. Don’t want you going out there where I can’t help ya.”

Oh, how adorable. Weird o b calling someone like Daryl adorable, but it was the perfect word now.

“I know that,” my voice softened a bit. “It’s how I feel when you guys go out there hunting. I don’t go with you when we all should stay together, from the beginning, like we agreed,” he nodded and I continued. “But things ain’t like that, we can’t have each other’s backs _all_ the time. I’ll go on this run and Merle will let us know pretty soon where he’ll want to be; hunting or Atlanta, and we’ll go with it.”

“How long do ya think it’ll take?”

“A day, probably, we’ll be back at night or in the morning, at most.”

Before he could say anything, Merle’s thundering, laughing voice broke into the tents’ space. “Hey, Sam! I’m coming with ya! Not gonna let those fuckers get to ya, sweetheart! Got ya back!” and he turned around to leave once again, still shouting. “Atlanta, here I come!”

Sighing, I looked back at Daryl, his face showing just how annoyed and worried he was, biting his lower lip as he did. I reached out to touch his arm. “We’ll be alright, don’t worry.”

He shook his head and took a step back, opening space between us, my hand dropping from his arm. “Can’t help it,” he said and turned to walk away.

* * *

I had only been able to enjoy the other’s company around the fire at night twice before. It had become a habit; some of them would take their spots on the lookout while the rest gathered around a low fire. Strong enough to warm the chill night but low enough not to be seen from a distance. There, we sat for about a couple of hours to eat and talk until sleep took over and quieted the camp until the next morning. Having been sick every night until a few days before, I had never been really able to enjoy it and was glad now I could. We had had chicken soup – it had been thinned with salted water to serve more people, but it still had tasted good enough – and were now quietly talking, tin mugs being passed from hand to hand. I was mostly watching and listening to the others talk, observing how the others interacted.

I could see Andrea and Amy had become quite close to Dale, who seemed to be some kind of father figure to them, though I honestly didn’t think Dale thought of Andrea paternally. Shane was always close to Lori and Carl, I had noticed it from the first day, and it had been intensifying these days. Jim and Jackie were good friends too, closer to the Morales then to any other. Glenn got along with everyone, except for the Dixons, who didn’t get along with anyone other than me. The Peletiers were always away, in their own little circle, Ed probably imposing that Carol and Sofia stayed with him, unable to get close to anybody else. I hated it, but I knew I could never force Carol to stand up for her husband, take her daughter and go sit with the others. She had to want to do it on her own.

Merle was on his watch duty, which he always accomplished by complaining a lot, but did his job. Daryl was around, sitting on a log a bit outside the circle, close to me and only listening, as usual. By my side, Amy took a sip of a drink on her tin mug and then offered it to me, the blonde, young woman nodding wordlessly in my direction. Warm tea would do great right then. I took it with a smile as a thank you and kept listening to Dale tell the circle about his late wife and the time he gave her a kitten for her birthday, to only then find out she was allergic to cats.

Smiling as I thought of how I had never had any kind of pet in my life, I brought the mug to my lips to take a sip. The smell of wine hit me as strongly as a punch to the nose, and the liquid touched my lips, the nectarous burn of the cheap sweet wine making my mouth water, my taste buds coming hungrily to life, starving, ordering my brain to demand more, a full gulp, the whole mug, the entire bottle, deciding I should just drain it, drink it all, fall around drunkenly forgetting all the worries, all the walkers, the pregnancy, the responsibilities, the ghosts from the past.

Instead, as soon as the wine touched my tongue, I spit it out. I spit it strongly, loud noise coming out as the red liquid sprayed towards the center of the circle. All heads turned to me, startled. Behind me, Daryl nearly got up but refrained, remained sitting but attentive.

“What the fuck!!” I yelled, a hand rubbing my lips to clean them, my heart pounding painfully. “That’s fuckin’ wine!!”

“Sam?” Shane was the one to ask as he stood up just as I did. I’m sure my body language was foreign to all of the group. “What’s the matter?”

Instead of giving him any attention because this had nothing to do with him, I looked down at Amy, who had the same startled expression the others did.

“Did you just give me a mug of wine without telling me what it was?!” I yelled and threw the white-painted tin mug to the ground, making Amy flinch, eyes wide in shock. “What the fuck is wrong with you?!”

Amy stuttered, trying to answer, but her older sister was already by me. “Hey, back off! What’s the problem?”

“The problem!” I carried on yelling. Daryl was also up, as most of the circle was now, and approached me slowly, I could see from the corner of my eye, and I’m sure he was fully aware of mine and everyone else’s movements. “The fuckin’ problem is that you don’t just give fuckin’ alcohol to people without warning them what the fuck it is! I thought it was tea!”

“So what?!” Andrea still countered, now standing in front of her young sister, facing me.

“What the fuck is the problem, Sam?” I also heard Shane ask me and saw him approach with puffed chest, just as I saw Daryl get closer, now by my side rather than behind me.

“The fuckin’ problem is that this was the first time in three fucking years,” I paused and moved on, “three years, four months and seventeen fuckin’ days, that I’ve had any real contact with any drink! That’s what’s the fuckin’ matter with it!”

Nobody spoke. I saw the awkwardness fall over them all replacing the astonishment like rain, people exchanging uncomfortable looks. Andrea turned back to look at Amy, who looked down. The only noise was the fire crackling softly and I ragged breaths and sniffs. My mind was in complete turmoil.

It didn’t take more than five seconds for Daryl to reach out and hold my arm just above my elbow and, with a gentle tug, pull me away with him. I moved with him unthinkingly, allowing Daryl to guide me out of the circle towards the tents. We had moved halfway there with him still gently holding my arm when I stopped walking. He stood there, watching me. I had my eyes unfocused, lost into the woods, a single tear path on my face. I turned around then, Daryl let me go, and took a few steps back towards the circle, but didn’t return there. I stopped only close enough to be heard.

“There was no way you could’ve known,” I started and lifted my lowered hear to look at Amy. “I’m sorry. You didn’t do anything wrong. I’m sorry I yelled at you.”

With that, without waiting for any answer or gesture, I turned around again and walked over to where Daryl was waiting for me, and together we moved out of everyone’s sight, silence falling over the camp.

I sat down heavily in a log close to the tents, both my legs shaking nearly out of control, elbows resting on them making my whole body tremble. I breathed hard, licked my lips, dried the sweat from my face.

“Fuck!” I let out suddenly, head falling between my knees. “Fuck, why did it have to…” and I didn’t finish the sentence, though Daryl surely understood.

“You didn’t want nobody to know,” he affirmed.

“No,” it came out muffled by my hands that covered my face. “Nobody had to know. Ain’t nobody’s business. But I bet you knew.”

“Wasn’t sure,” and we were silent again for a moment and Daryl took the time to sit by my side, on the other end of the log. “Was just alcohol?”

I took a deep breath, hands releasing my face, and popped my neck. “Was mostly alcohol, whatever I could get my hands on. Cheap wine was the main choice… Just like the one I tasted just now. But… Drugs too, on occasion.”

Daryl nodded slowly, saying nothing else, and started biting on his lower lip. He understood my problem well, I was sure. He had Merle, his admittedly addict to every drug that was illicit and licit brother, and his own father who had been heavily alcoholic until his liver exploded, not to mention tens of friends and acquaintances. I was just one more of them.

“I had enough examples at home not to get into it too deep,” I heard him sharing in a very quiet voice. I turned my head look at him sideways, interested, glad to have a distraction, so he moved on. “Father died of cirrhosis, he drank so much… And Merle, you know Merle.”

“Yeah…” I answered in a whisper that was for his ears only. “Good… Good that you didn’t…”

“Almost did, though… For a while… But then I started seeing a lot of old Will on me so I backed out,” he confessed and snorted a laugh. “Merle called me all kindsa things.”

I smiled, “Yeah, he would.” We shared one more long moment of silence before I spoke again. “My dad was a nice guy. Never saw him drink a drop of alcohol. Died of cancer.”

“Life ain’t fair,” Daryl told me as if he knew where my thoughts were going.

I nodded, looking down with a sad smile, my legs no longer trembling so much. “Spot on.”

“Well, at least in the apocalypse ain’t gonna be too easy to come across temptations…”

I smiled again and looked once more at Daryl. He looked shy, lips pressed together, self-conscious about his attempt to cheer me up a bit. The sight made me smile more. Ike I said, _adorable_.

“Yeah, I don’t think people will offer me mugs on unknown drinks too often.”

“You know what them parents say: never accept a drink from strangers., Daryl mumbled lowly, his voice grave but amused.

I laughed aloud now, a strange feeling on my chest that had nothing to do with the abstinence syndrome that had threatened to overtake me. My heart swelled knowing that Daryl was trying to cheer me up and comfort me, and I just couldn’t help but allow a large smile to lighten up my face.

“I think it was candy!” I laughed. “Don’t take candies from strangers.”

“Yeah, well, ya had a nice guy for a dad. Mine said that about drinks.”

I knew how sad this thought was, deep down, but still smiled. He did too, for a moment, and I could actually see teeth, something I wasn’t used to seeing too often, but he hid the larger smile again, looking down embarrassedly.

Silence fell again, but not at all uncomfortable. I still wanted to smile, but I still tasted the wine on my tongue, my mind confused about how I felt at the moment. I wanted to thank Daryl for talking to me, distracting me, and I wanted to ask more about his life but was afraid to scare him away. I desired to go back to the fire and take the rest of the bottle wine and drain it down, and I wanted to scotch over closer to Daryl and just be there.

I did none of those things, though, instead, I looked back over my shoulders, just like Daryl, at the sound of feet crunching dry leaves, and saw Merle approach, his imposing presence worsened by a thousand by the presence of a full bottle of moonshine loosely held on his left hand.

“Hey there, Boozer!” Merle thundered as he stepped over the log between Daryl and me and stood in front of us. “How come ya didn’t tell me, we coulda shared some vitamin water!”

“Oh, fuck off, Merle…” I said resting my elbows on my knees and hiding my face in my hands again.

“Oh, come on, Alkie! I know ya want it!” he sing-songed shaking the moonshine bottle.

“Yes!”, I yelled shooting up from the log. “Ya know I want it, so why are ya doing this?!”

“The fuck ya doin’ Merle?” Daryl was up too.

“It’s the end of the fuckin’ world!” he laughed and opened the bottle lid. “Bit won’t hurtcha!”

“But it will!” I yelled and took a step back from him and his bottle. “Ya know it will, ya know what’ll do to me if I take a sip!”

“I know. Ya gonna fuckin’ relax, is what’s gonna happen!”, and with that, he took a long gulp out of the bottle, a deep, unpleasant ‘ _ah!_ ” sound following it.

“Ain’t ya trying to quit it?” Daryl asked him as I turned my back to Merle, arms crossed. All the good feelings I’d been feeling simply vanished by then, my chest painful.

“Quitting on crystal and coke. Ain’t never said I’d stop the booze,” and another gulp followed it.

“Just leave me alone, Merle,” I told him quietly.

“Why? Yeah, I know why!” he drawled walking over to me. “Is cause ya know ya want it more than any fuckin’ thing right now. Ya want it more than ya want to breathe!”

“Merle!” I heard Daryl say in a firm, angry voice. He stood between his brother my back right before Merle reached me. “Back the fuck away from her.”

Before Merle could say anything else – which, by the look, I saw on the older Dixon’s face when I turned, would be a pissed-off remark, the beginning of a fight between the brothers, which would make the situation even worse – I interrupted them both.

“I want you away from me, Merle,” I started and the dry tone of my voice made even Daryl turn and stare. “I thought you had become my friend those months, but I was fucking wrong. You are the worst person someone could have their life. I’ve met horrible people in my life, Merle, and you have just proved to be one of them. This thing you did now? It’s despicable. Ain’t something you do to your enemy. This thing here, that we had - this _friendship_ , it’s over. Ya ruined it. Get the fuck away from me, Dixon.”

I didn’t wait to see or listen to any reaction. I rounded him and walked away a few steps, but didn’t leave the tent area since it was dark and unsafe to go wandering too far. Silence followed me where I stood, arms crossed, unseeing eyes staring into the darkened woods, trembling returned to my legs. After a moment I heard the leaves being crunched under careful, gentle feet. This information alone told me it was not Merle. Daryl entered my eyesight and stood there with me, silent.

“I didn’t think ya should go on that run tomorrow,” he started with a whisper after a while. “Now I’m sure ya shouldn’t go.”

“I’m fine, Daryl…”

“I know ya fine. Ya gonna be alright. I mean ‘bout Merle.”

“What about him?”

“He’s goin’. You said ya’d be the only one to look after him. Ya can’t now.”

“I’m still going. Glenn gonna need me there. I gotta be –”

I stopped talking when we heard steps again, both of us turning to look in silence. Among the tents, in the darkness, we saw as Lori tiptoed from her own tent towards the neighbor one – where Shane lived. Lori stopped there, looked around, her eyes sweeping over the spot where Daryl and I stood, not seeing us. Silently, the tent’s zipper was opened from the inside and we could faintly see Shane’s head come out of it, look around quickly as well, before his hand reached out to take Lori’s, pulling her with him inside. We heard the zipper being closed once more, and then he silence returned to the sleeping area.

“Yeah, they all need ya,” Daryl broke the silence once again, completely ignoring what we’d seen, turning to look at me. He whispered impatiently, but softness still coated his voice. “But what ya gonna do when Merle starts actin’ out? Ya know he gonna.”

“I know that,” exhaustion took over my tone. “But that’s exactly why I wanted to go, and I still go, ‘cause of that. Fight or no fight, him being a fuckin’ asshole to me or not, nobody there will be able to talk him out of it.”

“And you will?”

“I don’t know, Daryl, I’ll just,” I shook my head, closing my eyes. “I don’t know… I can’t…”

“You ok?”

“No, I need to lie down. I’m going to bed.”

I turned to go and Daryl followed me automatically until we stopped in front of my small, bright orange tent. Arms crossed, I looked down.

“Thank you, Daryl…”

“For what?”

“Staying with me and talking and… Distracting me of the... You know.”

“’S nothin’.”

“It ain’t nothing and you know it,” I whispered decisively and looked at him. “And, I mean, mostly for trying to protect me from Merle.”

He smiled that shy, tight-lipped smile Daryl had. “Ya hardly need protection, especially from Merle.”

I returned his smile. “I know. But ya did it anyway and…” I shrugged, looking down again. “Is nice,” I told him in a gentle whisper. He didn’t answer and, looking at him again, I knew he was embarrassed wordless. I smiled at the notion, again, and moved to the tent. “Goodnight, Daryl.”

I entered then and, just as I zipped the tent closed, I thought she heard him say “Goodnight, Sam,” but it was so quiet I wasn’t sure. As I lay down on my folding bed, my trembling legs and painfully pounding heart had given way to fluttering butterflies in my stomach.


	12. Day 61, part 1

The next day found me up and about even before daylight. I felt fine, not perfect, but better than the night before. I’d had a bad dream about drinking uncountable amounts of wine and throwing up as Daryl held my hair up, the desperate cries of a baby in the background, my mind too foggy and drunk to make me go and tent to it. I’d woken up, mouth dry, drowned in an entire plastic bottle of water and gone back to sleep, this time thankfully with no dreams. Now, as I gathered my own backpack among the others', I saw Darryl approach quietly. With a look, I knew he had something to say. The way he kept his head down but his eyes glued on mine, teeth nibbling on his lower lip, also told me that he didn't want to say whatever it was in front of the others.

I nodded at him once, sharply, and turned around to walk away, knowing he'd follow. I marched over to stand among the empty tents and turned around, arms crossed, to see Darryl join me. Now that we were alone, he let show what he was thinking. His pace was annoyed and agitated.

"Ya ain't goin'," he stated clearly.

"Yes, I am," I said just as firmly.

"Y ain’t!" he took a large step towards me and stood close, looking down at me. “I get you wanted to go before, but after last night, with Merle out there with ya – Just tell Shane to go!”

"If he goes, not me, Merle will be out there alone with all those people," I also took a step, entering his personal space. Daryl straightened his back but didn't move away, still looking down at me. "He's going and we can't convince him not to. I don't want him out there, not the way he is since yesterday, and what he did to me, but you know we can't stop him."

"I'll go then!" Daryl threw his arms up but still didn’t back away. "I'll go to help and contain him if that what this is about."

"You're going out to hunt, Daryl!" I gesticulated at him, getting impatient. "We're low on food, we need you to do this, we’ve talked about it already! Please, it is your job, you know that."

"My _job_?!" Daryl seethed. "My fuckin' job is looking after you! Go out and find food for all these people I don't even care about ain't more important than having your back!"

Holy shit. I was stuck in place, arms still crossed and looking up at his reddened blue eyes, anger evident as he breathed hard. I blinked and opened my mouth to speak but closed it again, uncertain of what to say.

His job was looking after me?

"Ya not going," he repeated in a definitive tone before turning around and walking away from me angrily, and still said over his shoulder. "Merle gonna deal with himself."

  


* * *

  


As Glenn said, the department store was still untouched, an actual supply paradise. We all looked around, delighted, and Glenn explained that he had been there already, got to know the back doors, rooftops of this and adjacent buildings, fire escapes and alleys around, all to make sure he could get in and out safely. We thanked and congratulated him, glad to imagine how long we’d be able to survive out of so many new things. Also thanking him, I was proud to see him take charge and organize the group the best he could, splitting them all up to go gather things. Yes, I was proud. Like I was watching my little brother learn how to walk.

As the others wandered away, Merle stood by me, his old, well know smirk firm in place.

“Watcha gonna get me do, sweetheart?”

“I ain’t calling the orders today, Dixon.”

He laughed. “Ain’t no fuckin’ way I’m letting China boy tell me what to do! And the fuck is that calling me Dixon all about? Still pissed ‘bout last night?”

“Did you forget what I told you? Were you trippin’ that much?”

“Wasn’t trippin’, princess, I’m quitting it. Did have a bit o’ moonshine though.”

“Do I need to tell you what happened then?”

“I remember just fine, thank ya very much. Just didn’t think ya’d be the type to hold the grudge ‘cause of a fuckin’ joke.”

“You of all people should know ya don’t joke ‘bout this kinda thing, Dixon. I meant it, just stay away. Do your job as Glenn tells you, just like everyone else, try to be normal for once.”

I walked away from him then, unable to look at his face any longer, but still heard as he mumbles, his footsteps going up the stairs, “Ain’t getting orders from China boy.” I took a deep breath, eyes closed. As angry as I was with him, as much as I wanted to cut any kind of relationship with him, I had the feeling that this had not been the right moment to do it. Something bad was going to come out of it and my right wrist was aching in warning.

A couple of hours later, the number of supplies scavenged that we all left close to one of the doors was huge. We’d found clothes, tools, camping gear, and even a few kitchen stuff. The mood around was good, I could see smiles I rarely saw on camp, but I worried. Glenn had told me Merle had been up on the roof, a rifle in hand, looking around to the other buildings, keeping guard. I would be relieved if I believed he would not do anything wrong until we left. Just as I thought about going up to call him down, since we’d be leaving in the next few minutes, all thoughts and smiles were gone. From the street, gunshots cut the eerie silence of Atlanta, followed after seconds by walkers passing in front of the store, seeable through the glass doors. The gunshots kept ringing, now strangely accompanied by horse hoofs hitting the asphalt.

“Fuck! What the fuck!” I cried as the number of walkers outside doubled every second. Without saying anything more than yelling in outrage, we all ran up the stairs that led to the roof in the hope of understanding what was going on. What we saw down there chilled my very bones. Some strange man with a hat was on a horse, shooting at the walkers that surrounded him, hitting a few but attracting even more to him, to the street, to the front of the store and around our cars. We watched as the man got hopelessly surrounded and started to fall. Andrea turned around not to see the man get eaten, Jackie cried but kept looking. The man fell from the horse, which was immediately attacked by what looked like a hundred walkers, and completely disappeared from view.

“Fuckin’ son of a bitch only lived enough to fuck us up!” Merle said from the edge of the group, from where he also observed.

“No, wait!” Glenn pointed down to the street. “There he goes!”

He was right, I could see. The man still had his hat on as he crawled under the tank – yes, incredibly an army war tank that had been abandoned in the middle of the street – and once again disappeared. We heard gunshots again and then, nothing.

“Shit!” T-Dog broke the silence. “ _Now_ he’s gone.”

“Don’t tanks have a door on the floor?” Morales asked to no one in special. “Like, a second exit, for emergencies?”

“Dude, I have no idea if tanks have emergency exits!” Glenn told him. “But I guess we can try the radio, see if he answers. I mean, if he’s alive and I can get the tank channel…”

“Why would you want to contact him?” Andrea asked as she turned again to the group. “Look at what he did! He’s killed us!”

“Killed us?” Jackie asked her. “What do you mean?”

“Do you see any way out of here? Every single walker in this area is in front of the store, on our cars! It will take a miracle to get us out of here, and it’s that bastard’s fault!”

“I hardly think the man did that on purpose,” I told her as I got away from the edge of the building. “What would you do if you were surrounded by walkers and had a gun in hand?”

“It doesn’t matter now, does it?” Andrea continued angrily. “We’re fucked! Fucked!”

“Well, ya seem to like that word, blondie!” Merle laughed and blinked at her, his tongue coming out as he laughed. Andrea rolled her eyes and turned away from him.

“Glenn, do you think you could contact him?” Morales asked him, ignoring what Andrea had said.

“I guess I can try. You guys think I should?”

“I think it’s up to you,” I gave him the choice.

He looked around at people while we all remained silent. I knew he would try to help the stranger, this was Glenn after all, nice, sweet good-hearted Glenn, he would never leave someone to die, even if it was a complete stranger who had just ruined all our means of escape.

“Ok,” Glenn said after a moment with a resolute nod. “Okay, then, I’ll need to go down through that building so I’ll get closer to the tank. I mean, If I can talk to him, but I guess I’ll get as close as possible before even trying, so we’ll make an escape fast. Ok. Right, when we come back, if it works out, we’ll need to cross that alley we used to get in, but there will be a few walkers there, so I’m gonna need help.”

“Ok, don’t worry about it,” I said as decidedly as he. “I got the radio, you let me know when you’re getting back to the alley, I got this.”

Glenn gestured to me with his own radio and ran away crying “ok” over his shoulder. Seeing him retreat, I also set to motion, trying to think fast.

“Morales! T-Dog! Come with me!”

I ran downstairs, knowing they’d be behind me, my mind rolling through the supplies and the rest of the store, trying to figure a safe way to clear the alley for Glenn to return to the building, the stranger with him or not. When we got to the store, my mind was set on the sports section. Understanding immediately what I meant, T-Dog and Morales got on hockey uniforms and got baseball bats ready at hand. We heard shooting on the street again at this point.

“Ok, go, go!” I rushed the two men to the side room, where a door led to the alley. My heart was racing, a chill on my stomach, thinking of how dangerous it was out there for Glenn, knowing I’d never forgive myself – or the man with the hat – if something happened to him.

We stood in silence, ready, the radio raised close to my face, listening intently. After a moment, Andrea and Jackie joined them without a word, looking just as nervous as I felt.

“I’m back! Got a guest plus four walkers in the alley!” Glenn’s voice creaked on the radio.

“Ok, you two, go now!” I ordered the man. T-Dog opened the door and ran out, followed by Morales. The three of us stood there, still, ears attentive to the noises. It was possible to hear the baseball bats crashing into walkers’ skulls, feet running. In a moment, Glenn ran in, breathing hard and red on the face, followed by the stranger. Outside, T-Dog shouted for Morales to go back and both entered the room, the door being shut after them.

“You ok?” I asked Glenn, holding him by his upper arms.

“Fine!” he told me, wide eyes and sweaty.

“Son of a bitch, we outta kill you!”

I let go of Glenn as I turned around to see Andrea cornering the man with a gun pointed right between his eyes. The man, who only now Sam saw was wearing a sheriff’s uniform, remained silent, blue eyes wide.

“Just chill out, Andrea, back off,” Morales told her as he started to take off the sports gear.

“Come on, ease out,” Jackie also tried to appease the other woman.

“Ease out?” Andrea repeated without looking away from the man. “You’re kidding me, right? We’re dead because of that stupid asshole!”

“Andrea,” I approached Andrea, her gun and the sheriff. “Back the fuck off!” I demanded but Andrea didn’t move. She still stared at him, gun hand shaking, breathing hard. “What ya gonna do, shoot the man? I said back the fuck off, Andrea. _Now_!”

The blonde, raging woman took a few more seconds before letting him go. She started crying immediately.

“We’re dead. All of us, because of you.”

“I don’t understand,” the man finally spoke.

“You don’t? Didn’t you see the fuckin’ ruckus you created outside?” I told him and grabbed his left arm. I walked out of the room dragging him with me into the store, everybody else following us. “Here we are, scavenging for supplies, all planned out, escape routes and all, planning really hard to just fucking survive. But see what you’ve just done!”

T-Dog, by our side, completed my thought just as we stopped in the middle of the store, looking towards the glass doors. “Every walker for miles around heard you popping off rounds.”

“You just rang the dinner bell,” Andrea completed the thought. We all stood there, looking out, an enormous herd of walkers by the door, trying to get in.

“Get the picture now?” Morales asked darkly.

The glass doors were not going to hold for too long. It cracked on the top left side just as we looked, under the pressure of the herd. It didn’t break, though, but it was a matter of time. We all backed away, startled.

“The fuck was you doin’ out there anyway?” I asked him.

“Trying to flag the helicopter.”

“Helicopter?” T-Dog asked, uncertain, and looked around to the others. “Man, that’s crap. Ain’t no damn helicopter.”

“You were chasing a hallucination,” Jackie came quickly to the conclusion. “Imagining things. It happens.”

“I saw it!” he said firmly annoyed.

I thought he sounded too certain for it to have been his imagination. What if there had really been a helicopter flying over Atlanta? It could mean rescue, but if the man had seen it, it had been about twenty minutes ago. It could be anywhere by now.

“Hey, T-Dog,” I called him. “Try the radio again, see if you can contact the others.”

He raised the radio instantly to channel it. We had tried it before, to contact the radio we had on camp, but it had been fruitless.

“Others?” the new man asked hopefully. “The refugee center?”

I laughed sadly, “Yeah, the refugee center!”

“They got biscuits waiting in the oven for us,” Jackie rolled her eyes.

“Got no signal,” T said still messing with the dial button. “Maybe the roof.”

Before anyone could agree to climb the stairs and go try it again from the top of the building, a gunshot echoed down to the store, startling even more the already scared group.

“Oh, no! Was that Dixon?” Andrea asked to no-one, looking up.

As if agreed to, we started running towards the stairs. All I could think was that I fuckin’ knew it, I knew Merle would do some shit.

“What’s that maniac doing?” Morales asked as we ran and I also heard Glenn calling the stranger to follow them upstairs. I ran in front of everyone up the stairs, my legs burning with the effort, but I only stopped when I stormed out of the door and onto the roof, only to see Merle standing on the parapet, aiming down and shooting what I thought would probably be walkers.

“Hey, Dixon, are you crazy?” Morales shouted as the others also cried out their disbelief. That was it, that’s exactly what I’d been talking about to Daryl; the moment where someone would have to control Merle had arrived.

“Hey! Ya’ll be more polite to a man with a gun! Huh?” he laughed aloud as he turned to look at the others and hopped down to the concrete. “Only common sense!”

“Man, you’re wasting bullets we ain’t even got!”, T-Dog approached him, shouting. “And you’re bringing even more of them down our ass, man! Just chill!”

“Hey, bad enough I’ve got this taco-bender on my ass all day, now I’m gonna take orders from you? I don’t think so, bro. That’ll be the day.”

They were facing each other now and I took the last few steps to stand by them.

“That’ll be the day?” T-Dog repeated, his annoyance almost palpable. “You got something you wanna tell me?”

“T, just leave it,” I told him. “It ain’t worth it. Now, Merle,” I turned to him. “Cut it out, alright? The fuck you doing?”

“Now ya talking to me? What happened to the get-away-from-me-Dixon bullshit, huh?” he looked briefly at me before facing T-Dog again. “I’ll tell ya the day, Mr. Yo. It’s the day I take orders from a nigger!”

“Son of a –”, was all T-Dog said before he jumped on Merle, trying to punch him but missing. I took a step back to get away from the line of fire, instinctively. With the butt of his rifle, Merle knocked T-Dog down. The sheriff, who had been standing quietly by, also moved in, trying to stop Merle, but got punched square in the face. With that out of his way, Merle moved back to T, and there was no stop now. He hit him repeatedly until the man fell to the ground, hitting his forehead on a large pipe. With him down, Merle still threw punches down at him, unaware of all the cries pleading him to stop. We only stopped, frozen in dread, when Merle took out a handgun and pointed at the hurt man. A terrifying silence took us all, T-Dog staring up at Merle with his eyes wide.

So it seemed I was not able to control Merle as I had told Daryl, after all. I fucked up.

“Merle?” I cut the silence. I was still sure as hell gonna try, “I know what this is, alright?” I said, my voice firm but controlled. “Dude, look at me. Merle?”

He did after a moment; gun still pointed, but looked right at me.

“Ya not gonna shoot him, alright? I know, and you know why you’re doing this. Ok? You’ll regret it later. Just cut it out.”

He stared at me for a moment, then looked around at the others and down at T once again. Withdrawing his hand, the spit on the man’s chest right before standing up. By the look on his face, the glassy, vicious eyes, I knew it wasn’t over, and I knew this was not withdrawal.

“Yeah! Alright!” He shouted, his gun on display across his chest. “We gonna have ourselves a little powwow, huh? Talk about who’s in charge. I vote me!”, he spoke as Andrea and Jackie helped T-Dog to get away from him. “Anybody else? Huh? Democracy time, y’all!”

I snorted by his side. “When I said cut it out I mean that too, Merle.”

“Anybody here voted for ya to be in charge?” he looked right at me. “Huh? I’m giving ‘em the chance now! Show of hands, huh? All in favor! Come on!”

“Merle, just –”

“Nobody? Guess I win then! That’s good! Anybody else, huh? Anybody?”

“Yeah,” Sam turned to see the sheriff by us. I hadn’t heard him approach, his feet silent, and he shoved the butt of Merle’s own rifle to the side of his head. Merle fell instantly and the sheriff straddled him, held his arm up and handcuffed him to a pipe so fast I couldn’t even follow his movements.

“Hey!” I yelled at him just as he grabbed Merle and sat him up against the larger pipes.

“Who are you, man?” Merle asked him.

“Officer friendly,” the sheriff took Merle’s gun and checked it. “Look here, _Merle_. Things are different now. There are no niggers anymore, no dumb-ass shit, inbred white-trash fools either. Only dark meat and white meat. There’s us and the dead, we survive by pulling together, not apart.”

“Fuck you, man!”

“I can see you make a habit of missing the point.”

“Yeah? Fuck you twice!”

I snorted despite of the situation, “So mature, Dixon.”

Not seeming to have heard me, the sheriff pointed the gun right at Merle’s head. I took another step closer.

“Ought to be polite with a man with a gun! Only common sense.”

“Ya wouldn’t. You a cop!”

“All I am anymore is a man looking for his wife and son,” he lowered the gun. “Anybody who gets in the way of that is gonna lose. I’ll give you a moment to think about that.”

Seeing Merle going quiet tranquilized me a bit. I still remained close as the cop checked on Merle’s pockets and his hand came out with a little bag of coke. I knew he had to have used something, but now I was sure.

“Fuck, Merle…” I was disappointed.

“You got some on your nose there,” the sheriff said looking at Merle form up close.

Merle laughed, “What ya gonna do? Arrest me?”

The man got up and threw the bag out of the building. Merle shouted, cursed, like a hurt feline in a cage, but everyone else seemed to have stopped listening to him. Andrea was tending to T-Dog’s wounds, the sheriff got away from the group and everybody else seemed to calm down. Also silent, I came even closer and crouched by his side.

“Coke again, Dixon?”

“Fuck you.”

“You were doing well, you know you were,” I ignored it. “Ya see what happens the first day ya get back to it?”

“I said fuck you! Just get me the fuck outta here!”

“Well, make up your fuckin’ mind, Dixon. You want me to go fuck myself or to let you go?”

“Ya tryin’ to be funny, pussycat?”

“Nah. I’m just gonna leave ya there for a while. Calm down, let the high go, think about what you did to get yourself in this fucked up situation. We’ll talk later.”

I got up and was thankful that Merle said nothing else, neither did anybody. I walked over to where the stranger was on the parapet, looking out to the city. I could see him cradling his hand, the one he used to punch Merle.

“You’re not Atlanta PD. Where you from?” I asked him as I stood by his side.

“Up the road a ways.”

“Well, no matter, “ I said and he looked at me. “Merle is like that most of the time, he’s a drug addict, uneducated redneck. But he was cutting out on the drugs, back on camp. He was getting better, more controlled. We had a fight, things got ugly, and apparently he got right back to it.”

“You’re his wife or something?”

I laughed, “God forbid, no. I’m his friend. Sorta… Maybe not anymore. But ya see, I had it. In a fight or not, I still got a history with the man, I still know how to talk to him. You’re new here, ya don’t know us, so next time, before ya go on handcuffing people to the roof, just back off and let _me_ sort out our problems, alright?” I finished and turned to leave. “Welcome to the jungle, sheriff.”


	13. Day 61, part 2

Merle had been quiet for the past few minutes, but I wasn’t fooled. I knew he was high, his mind probably elsewhere, and that he would return at any given moment. I sat on the pipe where he had his back onto and just observed. The group was quiet. Andrea and Jackie were side by side looking down at the street, talking quietly. T-Dog was sitting on the floor, still in pain from the beating he had received, the radio in hand. Morales seemed anxious, pacing slowly close to the parapet. Glenn had sat down on the same a few minutes ago, expressionless, but I could see his eyes dancing quickly as if thinking hard about something. The new guy – I wondered why nobody had even asked his name yet – was still where I had left him minutes ago, on the other side of the roof.  
I had heard what he had old Merle about being just a guy looking for his wife and son and felt sorry for him. He seemed hopeful or at least seemed to be holding tightly to that hope only to keep moving, but I had a more realistic mind. I knew how unlikely it was that the man would ever find them. They’d probably be gone now, dead or undead. I looked down between my knees, shaking my head. This man had better have an idea to get them out of here soon. The doors were blocked, our cars surrounded, the street looking like an ant’s nest from above. It was not safe to try and pass by them; we’d all end up dead. So far my only idea was to wait it out, the walkers were bound to give up and disperse slowly, but they could break the door before that, so it was not an option. Unless they passed flying above the walkers or underneath   
Underneath.  
I heard voices now, I knew the group had started talking again, but only heard them from the back of my mind. If we could find a way to pass by the walkers, maybe a way to go into the sewers…  
“How’s that signal?” the sheriff approached asking, looking down to where T was sat.  
“Like Dixon’s brain. Weak.”  
“Keep trying,” Morales told him.  
“Why?” Andrea’s tone was hopeless. “There’s nothing they can do. Not a damn thing.”  
“Got some people outside the city, is all,” Morales clarified it to the new guy. “There’s no refugee center. That’s a pipe dream.”  
“Then she’s right, we’re on our own,” the sheriff said. “It’s up to us to find a way out.”  
“Good luck with that!” Merle drawled from his spot, making me turn to look at him. I had really thought he’d been out all this time. “These streets ain’t safe in his part of town from what I head. Ain’t that right, sugar tits?” he was now looking at Andrea, who was fumbling into a backpack on the ground. I rolled my eyes knowing what was coming. “Hey, honeybunch, what’d you say you get me out of these cuffs, we go off somewhere and bump some uglies? Gonna die anyway.”  
“I’d rather,” Andrea cut him off as she got up, something from the bag in hand.  
“Rub muncher. I figure as much.”  
My mind was only half on what I heard around. I was half glad Merle had never proposed me something like that, half still thinking of the possibility of finding a sewer to climb down.  
“The streets ain’t safe…” new guy was mumbling.  
“Now that’s an understatement,” Morales told him, deep frown in his forehead.  
“What about under the streets?” I voiced what I’d been thinking and stood up, taking two steps to approach them. “The sewers?”  
“Oh, man!” Morales’ face lit up.  
“Hey, Glenn!” I called him and saw him straighten his back immediately, ready. “D’you know if there are any manholes in the alley?”  
Glenn got up and ran instantly. He returned in a moment, still running. “No, must be all out on the street where the geeks are.”  
“Maybe not!” Jackie, who had been quiet for the most part of the time, spoke up. “Old buildings like this were built in the twenties. Big structures often had drainage tunnels into the sewers in case of flooding down the subbasements.”  
“How do you know that?” Glenn asked her.  
“It’s my job. Was. I worked in the city zoning office.”  
Silence took us for a moment while we all looked at one another. The sheriff looked at me then, raising an eyebrow in question.  
“We’ll try this,” I decided. “We have to find the entrance to this tunnel. Glenn?”  
“I think I might know where it is!” he smiled and ran in the quick way that he did, we all following him without further questioning.

* * *

The subbasement was pitch dark when Morales, Andrea, Jackie, the new guy and I followed Glenn down, only our flashlights making possible to discern anything. We stood at a guardrail, looking down at what looked like a sewer entrance. Glenn informed us it was the lowest point in the building, therefore the most probable place. When questioning who was going to go down there to see if it would work, every single head turned to Glenn, he younger and quicker one, except for me.  
“We’ll be right behind you,” Andrea told him. At least, I thought, she’d had the decency to sound guilty for suggesting him to go down there.  
“No, you won’t!”, Glenn answered firmly, surprising the others. “Not you.”  
“Why not me? Think I can’t?”, Andrea now sounded offended, a second’s change on tone.  
“I – I wasn’t…”  
“Speak your mind,” the sheriff told Glenn and made me roll my eyes. I was annoyed now. Annoyed with how everyone turned to Glenn when something scary had to be done, annoyed at Andrea’s both kinds of tone, and now at the new guy trying to give heartfelt advice when he had only just arrived.  
“Look, until now I always came here by myself. In and out, grab a few things, no problem. The first time I bring a group everything goes to hell. No offense. If you want me to go down this gnarly hole, fine, but only if we do it my way,” he looked down at the entrance and back at the group. “It’s tight down there. If I run into something and have to get away quickly, I don’t want you all jammed up behind me, getting me killed. I’ll take one person.”  
The new guy straightened up and opened his mouth to speak, but Glenn cut him out. At least he had tried to step up, I would give him that.  
“Not you either,” Glenn said raising a hand to stop him. “You’ve got Merle’s gun and the key to the handcuff and I’ve seen you shoot,” he stopped to look at me, across from him on the guardrail. “Right?”  
“I’d feel better if you were out in the store watching those doors, covering our ass,” I replied and added, looking at Andrea, “You’ve got a gun, so you should go with him.”  
The both of them nodded, and so did Glenn before he kept talking, “You’ll be my wingman,” he told Morales, who nodded. “Jackie and Sam’ll stay up here. Something happens, you’ll cover the entrance and yell down to us, get us back here in a hurry.”  
“No,” I said and they all looked at me. I had crossed my arms, a gesture they all must have known by now to mean I had my foot down. “I heard what you said, Glenn, but no. You’re running the group today, I know it, but sorry, no. I won’t get you down there. I’ll go with Morales.”  
“But Sam, if something happens the camp needs –”  
“I ain’t worried about the camp now, Glenn, what matters now is that we get outta here safely, and you’re the one who knows this place well enough to help get us out. I’m not risking that,” I saw Glenn start to disagree, but I knew we didn’t have much time to discuss it. “I’ve made up my mind, Glenn. You’re not going down there; I am. You stay here with Jackie. Sorry, dude, that’s final.”  
Vexed, Glenn looked down, not trying to hide he was not happy with the decision but didn’t say anything. The others nodded and I poked Morales in the arm as I passed by him on my way to the ladder. Four flashlights illuminated our way down, me first, and as we stood on the bottom of the pit, Andrea and the new guy left to go back to the store. With a look and a nod, Morales and I walked into the sewer. There were rats – real big ones – down there, but I didn’t mind them. My wingman and I walked slowly and in silence for a few minutes, the air stale and thick made it hard to take any deeper breath.  
“Hey, Sam?” Morales broke the silence quietly, but still, it sounded loud down there. “What’d you make of this new guy?”  
“Hard to say. Nosy, for sure. Walks in here kicking the door and handcuffing people to the roof.”  
“Do you think Dixon was gonna stop?”  
“Think so. I got my own problems with Merle but we manage. No way we’ll ever know now.”  
“Guy’d better find a way to get us outta here if the sewers don’t work. We’re trapped in here ‘cause of him.”  
“Ya damn right. Not that he did it on purpose or anything, but is still on him.”  
“So, d’you think we like him?”  
I turned my head a bit to look back at Morales, understanding that by ‘we’ he meant the whole group.  
“Not up to me, Mo. Ya wanna like the guy, you like the guy. I don’t dislike him if you wanna know, but I’ll keep an eye on him.”  
“Guy reminds me of Shane a little,” Morales told me. “Like it’s on him to take charge.”  
“So we’ll be fucked. Two cops banging on their chests? Don’t see how this gonna work.”  
“Hey, is that a door?”  
At the end of the tunnel, a heavy-looking metal door closed the way. Morales stepped up to open it, he had to use his shoulder weight to push it open, but it didn’t offer any more trouble. Inside, the air was even thicker, the smell of something dead hitting us like a punch. Morales and I looked at each other and nodded, agreeing how careful they had to be. Across the small area, there were a few steps down and, finally, a round hole closed with an iron grid.  
“Yeah, we got ourselves a sewer tunnel. Jackie was right.”  
“Can we cut through it?” I asked as I touched the iron. It seemed awfully strong.  
“If we have a blowtorch and half a day, sure. Dale’s hacksaw sure as hell won’t do it.”  
Unmistakable sound or growling reached our ears then, among rat’s squeaking, making us both take a step back from the grid. A walker inside, still chewing on a rat, tried to get to us, his arms crossing the grid, face pressed onto it. Another walker joined it then, and by the sound of it, there were more approaching.  
“Well, fuck,” I said aloud over the walkers’ moaning. “Ain’t a good idea to spend half a day to open hell’s gates.”

* * *

Silence was once again over us, but the tension was more palpable than ever. The first glass downstairs had been broken by the walkers, who were working insistently on breaking the second one – the only thing separating them from our group upstairs – as we looked down to the street, thinking hard. The sewers had been a dead-end, as Morales and I regretfully told the others when we returned. Thunder rumbled in a low threat above our heads. The new guy had a pair of binoculars in hand and had been looking around for a couple of minutes now, quietly. I was by his side on the parapet and he handed me the binoculars as if in a kind of sudden revelation.  
“That construction site,” he pointed to it making me look in that direction. “Those trucks, they always keep keys on hand.”  
“You’ll never make it past the walkers,” Morales said by our side, shaking his head.  
New guy looked past me and Morales, to Glenn. “You got me out of that tank.”  
“Yeah, but they were feeding. They were distracted,” Glenn tried to dismiss it.  
“Can we distract them again?”  
“Right!” we all turned to look down at Merle, handcuffed. I’d thought he’d been sleeping or something, he had been so quiet. “Listen to him, he’s on to something! A Diversion, like on ‘Hogan’s Heroes’!”  
I had no fucking idea what Hogan’s Heroes was, and by Glenn’s looks, neither did he. I assumed Merle had not said something good, as expected, by the other’s reactions. The sheriff, though, only moved on.  
“They’re drawn by sound, right?”  
“Right. Like dogs,” I told him. “They hear a sound, they come. Is why your bullet got so many of them on our asses.”  
“What else?”  
“Other than by sound?” I snorted a laugh. “They see, smell, all the works, like any person but dead. Man, have you been in a coma or something all this time?”  
“They can tell us by smell?” he asked, ignoring my question.  
Glenn laughed nervously, “Can’t you?”  
“They smell dead, we don’t. It’s pretty distinct!” Andrea also had an unbelieving tone on her voice. None of us understood how this guy had survived so far without knowing this basic information about the dead. The dead, though, were almost invading the store by now, so there was to spare time to talk about this. We had to get out, and fast.  
He looked around, at each of us, and even though nobody knew this man, it was written all over his face that he had an idea, a mischievous grin on his lips.  
“What?” I asked him.  
“So if we smell and look like them… They won’t see us. Ain’t that right?”  
Nobody answered, but Andrea laughed it out, Glenn looked nauseous and the others seemed just ultimately hopeless. But damn. A light bulb turned on atop my head. What a fucking good idea!  
“Wait, guys,” I told them and the man looked at me, the glint in his eyes sparkling more. “It makes sense! Just, I mean, got no idea of how doing it –” I paused, ideas dizzyingly flowing around my mind. “Guts, you think?”  
He smiled. “That’s exactly what I’m thinking.”

* * *

He didn’t want to do it, it was clear. The idea of slicing and digging though a walker’s corpse with axes had been ok in theory, but now as we all looked down at the walker – one T-Dog had beaten to death with a baseball bat earlier – the idea seemed much more stupid. I stood away with the other two women. Not that I was showing or telling anybody, but my stomach was complaining loudly at the mere idea of what the men were going to do now.  
The kid didn’t like guts, apparently.  
They had paid their respects for the man that walker had once been – Wayne Dunlap, and he was an organ donor – and now there was nothing else to do but gut him. Exclamations, disgusting sounds and something in Spanish followed the first blow and kept coming for as long as the sheriff dug into the corpse with the axe he had taken from the wall. It had been decided I was going with him; we were already wearing a beige robe over their clothes, ready to the gore shower. I was breathing hard while it happened, as intestines and other indistinct, putrid-smelling human organs were exposed and turned to pieces.   
“I am so gonna hurl…” Glenn moaned across from me, reflecting my thoughts.  
“Not now, please, Glenn,” I told him despite my own nausea.  
“Everybody got gloves?” the man asked as he stopped a bit sweaty. “Don’t get any on your skin or in your eyes.”  
Reluctantly, all the others started shoving their hands into the walker’s guts and pulling pieces and gooey things out to rub on us both, all the while complaining. It took no more than a minute for Glenn to let go and turn around, away from the others, to throw up. The sound and smell of it, combined with the few pairs of hands rubbing gore on my clothes triggered my own nausea. I shoved the hands away and also turned away.  
“I can’t!”, I without taking a moment to think. “Oh God, I can’t!” and went on for a second round.  
So now, after I had shrugged off the robe and it was wrapped around Glenn, who recovered from the nausea as I simply didn’t, I felt so angry I almost cried. I knew I had to be the one to go with the sheriff, I didn’t want anyone else to do that in my place, especially Glenn, but as I retreated to the other side of the room to hurl for the third time, I knew I didn’t have a choice. Glenn and the new guy – I wondered why I hadn’t still asked about his name – were now covered in red and black matter and Andrea was handing Glenn her own gun.  
“What about Merle Dixon?” T-Dog asked the man and, after a second of thought, he fumbled under the dirty robe and into one of his pockets to fish out the handcuff key. He handed it to T, reverently, and the other man nodded, gravelly. Oh, god damn it! The keys should be with me, it would be my responsibility to set Merle free when the moment came, but now they had restarted the process with the remaining guts of the walker, and I couldn’t look or talk anymore. I had nothing else to throw up now, but the kid was still extremely angry with the scene. 

* * *

“Hey, what’s happening? Sam?” Merle yelled hoarsely as soon as we returned to the roof, running to the edge to look down the street.  
“T, try the radio again!” I instructed instead of answering.  
“Hey, come on! Talk to me, yall!”  
I looked at him only long enough to see Merle seemed a bit soberer than before, his words less slurred. I kept running to the edge, though, as T-Dog’s voice trying communications again sounded through the roof. Morales found Glenn and his gory companion down the street in a moment, pointing down at them, followed closely by a loud thunder echoing down, as if on cue.   
“That asshole’s out on the street with the handcuff keys?”  
T-Dog held the key, toying with it for Merle to see. His face showed the dread of being literally on T-Dog’s hands after having beaten him up. Merle looked directly at me for a moment, but I didn’t say anything, turning to look down again. Maybe it would be good for him to feel fear once in a while.  
“Hello!” a crackling voice sounded over the radio, making everybody silent and turn towards it. “Hello? Reception’s bad on his end! Repeat!  
“Sounds like Dale,” I whispered, afraid my very voice was going to make the connection fail. There was more static and a few lost words, but it was more than they had been able to get until now. “Just tell them what’s going on, maybe they’re listening,” I told him a little bit louder.  
“We’re in some deep shit,” he started. “We’re trapped in the department store. There’re walkers all over the place, hundreds of them! We’re surrounded”.  
Nothing followed it. Dale’s voice didn’t sound again and, slowly, even the static stopped.  
“Good, now they think we’re dead,” Andrea whined as she turned to the edge of the roof again.  
“Hey!” Merle yelled again. “The fuck’s going on?”  
“Shh, Merle!” I turned to him. “We don’t know! They’re just walking to the construction site, nothing else!”  
What followed were minutes of desperation. It had started raining, a quite strong shower, which seconds later made the two of the man down the street start to run. Tens of walkers ran after them, almost as fast, having scented their living flesh. Upon the roof, there was nothing anyone could do, and I dreaded the moment I would see Glenn get caught and eaten right in front of our eyes. They were far now, jumping over the construction fence only a second away from the walkers’ jaws. The fence fell even before they reached the truck they had been aiming for and it was possible to see them entering and closing the doors a breath away from being reached by the dead. The truck sped away immediately, leaving our line of sight.  
“They’re leaving us!” Andrea cried.  
“What? What?” Merle reacted from his spot.  
“No, no! Come back!!” Andrea kept going.  
“Of for fuck’s sake, Andrea, shut up!” I snapped. “They won’t leave us, are you crazy?”  
“Do you see them?” the blonde, crying woman turned to me, and pointing somewhere out the building. “They’re gone! They know there’s no way out, they’ve left us!”  
“They are coming back,” I stated firmly and looked at the others, who also had desperation on their eyes and back at Andrea. “They’ll be back! Quit being such a fuckin’ drama queen.”  
It took less than two minutes for the radio, still on T-Dog’s hand, to creak alive. “Those roll-up doors at the front of the store facing the street?” Glenn started nervously but speaking rather clearly. “Meet us there and be ready!”  
Hopefulness repapered on everyone’s eyes and, without saying more, we all started gathering our bags in a hurry. With two backpacks over my shoulders, I turned to Merle, only to see all the other run towards the door, including T-Dog, accompanied by Merle’s desperate screams as soundtrack.  
“T-Dog!!” I yelled as loud as I could. “Get your ass back here with that key!!” Anger raised to my throat, reddening my face as I saw my supposedly friend look between me, Merle and the door, doubtful if he was really going to go back. “Gimme that fuckin’ key, T-Dog, or so help me God!!”  
He turned and ran to me, finally. Everybody else had vanished through the heavy roof door and I was still close to Merle, I hadn’t been able to take a single step towards it. As T-Dog approached and Merle still yelled desperately, his voice hoarser and hoarser, he took the key out of his pocket. It flew out of his hand in a moment, so fast I could barely follow its motion, as T-Dog tripped and fell to heavily to the ground. The small key disappeared into one of the drain holes, followed by a frantic wail of “No!” from Merle.  
“Fuck!” I cried, hands raising to my head. “No, fuck! Fuck, T, the fuck did you do?!”  
“Son of a bitch! You did that on purpose!”  
“I didn’t mean to!”  
“Fuckin’ liar! You threw it on purpose!” Merle kept on furiously.  
“It was an accident! I’m sorry!” T kept apologizing as he walked back to the door, and then turned and ran away.  
“Fuck!!” Merle cried, unintelligible words of rage coming out of his mouth as he fought the handcuffs, strongly enough to draw blood from his wrist.  
I joined him; backpacks forgotten on the floor as I sat down and started kicking the pipe with my heels. It didn’t even make a scratch.  
“Stop it, ya fuckin pussy!” Merle yelled at me, his free hand pulling me away from him. “Ya gotta go. Go, get the fuck away from here!”  
“I’m not leaving you here.”  
“Yeah, y’are! They’ll leave ya here to, go!”  
“No, Merle!” I’m not leaving you alone here! They’ll – I don’t – They’ll come back for us.”  
“They won’t!” he shouted to loud that a vein on his neck seemed to pop. “They not coming back, ya gotta go! Go, get the fuck outta my face!”  
“Merle –”  
“I don’t want ya here, Georgia!” he spit and actually foamed out of his mouth, getting up as best as he could with a hand attached to the pipe. “Leave me alone! Go, now!”  
“Geor – ” I started, confused.  
“Aren’t ya listening to me? Go! Go! Get lost, Georgia, now!”  
“Okay!” I finally cried, getting up bringing the bags with me. “I’ll go but I’m coming back for ya, Merle, me and Daryl, we’ll come back!”  
“I don’t fuckin’ care, GO!”  
Fighting the urge to cry, I ran, Merle finally going quiet. As I crossed the door, I saw a chain that had not been there before, with a heavy padlock hanging with it on the door handle. Relieved someone had taken the time to put it there before fleeing, I locked the door behind me, still taking an extra second to make sure it was firm in place, before flying down the stairs.  
There were walkers inside the store, having just broken the glass. I stopped for a second, “No, no, no…” before making a mental line from where I stood to the door that would lead me to the doors Glenn had spoken about. Holding the bags firmly around my shoulders, I set to motion, running right towards the walkers. Two meters away from the closest one, I took an abrupt turn to my left, a still empty area and had to climb up to a counter, running on top of it, avoiding walkers’ hands by inches. Closer to the door, I was able to fall back to the floor and run. The others were there, on the side room, throwing the last of the bags into the parked truck, yelling incoherently. T-Dog took my bags before motioning me to take his hand so he could help me up. With an angry frown, I rejected it and climbed in by myself. The truck doors were still open as it took off, the sweaty, smelly sheriff driving it away. Morales closed them and we all sat down, heavy breaths and the nearly audible sound of our heartbeats.  
After a moment of silence, the others started looking abound, confused, especially at T-Dog and me. Bile rose to my throat once again, at him for dropping the key, at the stranger for handcuffing him in the first place, and even more at myself for having let Merle bully me into leaving him there. Fucking dammit, I had just left him behind!  
“I dropped the damn key,” T-Dog explained bitterly, and what happened had become quite clear. We had just abandoned one of theirs.  
Silence took the truck, exhaustion winning over words. Morales was having a quiet conversation with the sheriff on the front seat, but I couldn’t listen. I had lain down on the floor of the truck, an arm draped over my eyes. Glenn had passed by us minutes ago with his sports car, alarm buzzing loudly, cheering in joy. I didn’t blame him. We had gotten out, half by his brave actions, and he hadn’t just been forced to abandon a friend behind.  
A bit calmer now, I felt my stomach complain by the motion of the truck and my position, but I couldn’t bring myself to move, my mind worried about something else. How on Earth was I supposed to tell Daryl about what had happened? About me going even though he had asked me not to? About not being able to control Merle? About him being there, even now, alone and handcuffed on the roof under the sun? I was apprehensive over his reaction with the others but dreaded the possibility of him hating me. What the fuck was I gonna do if Daryl turned away from me?  
It took less than expected to go get back to camp. Truck parked close to the end of the road, Andrea was the first one to slide out, running to reencounter her sister. Morales, also eager to see his family, was just as fast.  
“Hey,” I turned to see the sheriff approach me behind the truck, the others already away. “I just wanted to say… I’m sorry. For your friend.”  
“Yeah? Are you really, new guy?”  
He rested his hands on his hips, looking down but with eyes still on my face. “It was never my intention to leave him there. I just wanted him to be in control.”  
I breathed out, annoyed, fingers pinching the bridge of my nose. “Fuck, I know that. I know alright? I don’t blame you for doing that. But, fuck, he is there now, trapped, and it is because of that. Just a fact.”  
“Hey! Helicopter boy!” Morales voice sounded over the reunion and conversation that had been going on nearby, making us both look in their direction. “Come say hello!”  
He looked again at me as if asking for permission or what to do. “Just go,” I told him and turned to get my backpacks. I felt like crying, exhaustion hit me like a wrecking ball. I knew Daryl wasn’t back from his hunt yet, it would most likely happen tomorrow. It was good, I thought. At least I would try to get some sleep before having to deal with it and probably lose one more friend.  
My thoughts were interrupted by a child’s cry, squeaky and happy. Carl’s voice, I recognized. Turning to look, I saw him throw himself over the new guy, who was now on the floor, crying, clinging to him. It made sense when I looked at Lori, her eyes, which were naturally big even wider now, filled with tears. In a moment the three of them were hugging. Over their shoulders, he was now looking at Shane, who had a confused smile on his face, and the whole camp understood. The new guy was Rick Grimes.

* * *

I hated that Carol had to help prepare dinner and then take her part and her family’s and go sit away from the others, not being allowed to socialize, talk like everybody else. Ed made her sit away, Sofia in tow. The low fire creaked n the middle of the group, quietly listening to Rick tell them what had happened. He had woken up from a coma in the abandoned hospital, completely unaware of what had happened – exactly like I had unintentionally guessed up on the roof. Now it made sense why he knew nothing about walkers. He had gone home and then back to Atlanta and that had been when they met, never once imagining that his family was back at the camp. Lori had told me Rick was dead, that Shane had seen his body. Now, as Rick spoke, wife and son wrapped around him, I observed Shane’s expression or lack thereof. Nothing other than his wide eyes gave away anything he was feeling. He smiled a bit every time Rick looked directly at him, but his smile vanished as soon as he thought he wasn’t being watched. Making a mental note to observe him even closer than I always did, I decided something was definitely going to come out of this.   
On the other little group, Ed placed an extra log on their fire and it rose up, light strong enough to call attention. Shane looked at me. That was supposed to be my kind of responsibility.  
“Damn, Shane, could you take care of it?” I asked him, happy to give him something to do other than watch as his best friend took away the girl he had been seeing. “I just can’t deal with fuckin’ Ed right now.”  
“Sure,” he said as he got up, seemingly grateful for having a chance to direct some of his feelings. He got up and the group remained in silence for a moment, the creaking of the firewood the only thing to be heard. I could feel the weight of stares in my direction.  
“Sam?” Glenn broke the silence with an almost whisper, two spots away from me. “You okay?”  
I looked at him for a moment before answering, clearly aware of all the eyes on me. Bitterness coating my eyes and voice, I finally answered “My friend’s just been abandoned handcuffed to a rooftop in a walker infested building. I ain’t okay.”  
Glenn tried a sympathetic smile, but failed miserably, making me almost feel sorry for him. Nothing of it had been his fault; he went out there, risked his life covered in walkers’ guts to take them all out of there. That was something I would never forget.  
“Have you given any thought to Daryl?” Dale asked me carefully. “He won’t be happy to hear his brother was left behind.”  
Before I could laugh and tell him ‘no shit’, T-Dog answered his question. “I’ll tell him. I dropped the key; it’s on me.”  
“I cuffed him. That makes it mine,” Rick cut matter-of-factly.  
“It’s not a fuckin’ competition!” I told them both with a bit more force than intended. Before moving on, I breathed once and continued a little calmer. “He’s not gonna wanna hear it from the one who cuffed and the one who lost the key.”  
“I did what I did. Hell if I’m gonna hide from him.”  
“We could lie.” Amy, leaning against her older sister’s shoulder, barged in.  
“Or you all could stop pretending you actually cared for Merle or even for Daryl,” I gave up on hiding my annoyance. I looked at Amy, “Lie, really? Is that what you’d all do if I wasn’t here?”  
“We’re telling the truth”, Rick spoke as firmly as me.  
“Merle was out of control,” Andrea also opined and looked at Lori. “Something had to be done or he’d have gotten us killed. Your husband did what was necessary, and if Merle got left behind, it is nobody’s fault but Merle’s.”  
“Right, I see,” I spoke again. “None of you waited. You all just ran away from the roof, ignoring his screaming for help. If I remember right, Andrea, you were the first one out of the door. If I didn’t plead for T to come back with the key,” I looked at him, “you’d have left as well. Dropping the key was an accident, but you weren’t even gonna go back to try. So, please, do not tell me being left behind was Merle’s fault. All the rest, yeah, but not this.”  
“I was scared and I ran. I’m not ashamed of it,” T-Dog answered my accusation. “We were all scared, we all ran, and for what I see, so did you. You’re here, ain’t you?”  
“He made me run. Even high and desperate he knew I’d also be left behind if I didn’t run. Or would you guys stop, or even think of turning back to get me? I did run, yeah, but I stopped long enough to chain that door.”  
“Thought you would…” T said, calming down a bit, lowering his voice and looking down. “It was on the floor, by the stairs, I got it and hung on the door, thought you’d lock it.”  
“Yeah… Thanks for that…”  
“Hold on…” Andrea whispered. “What does that mean?”  
“Staircase is narrow,” Sam started explaining. “Few walkers may have climbed it, not many not enough to break the chain.”  
“No. Not that chain. Not that padlock,” T-Dog continued my thought.  
“It just means that Merle’s still there. Alive, abandoned on the roof, alone and handcuffed. That, no competitions for who’s the guiltiest – That’s on all of us.”  
Painful silence stretched around the fire. I felt my throat constricted, wondering again how I was supposed to tell it to Daryl. T-Dog got up holding his ribcage, looking like he might throw up. I had to get out of there as well, and knew nobody could possibly say anything of use now.  
“We’d best be getting off”, I informed after a moment. “Was a long day for all of us. Everyone who hasn’t been to Atlanta today should take the rounds, we’re wracked. That ok?”  
Nodding, the others agreed and started vanishing to their own posts or tents. I didn’t want to think of anything else, not tonight. Entering my small, orange tent, I dropped to my bed without even removing my shoes, passing out rather than falling asleep.


	14. Day 62, part 1

I couldn’t help but laugh. Arms crossed, one hand covering my mouth and shoulders shaking against my will, I watched Glenn whine about the car being torn apart. He had wished he’d keep it, but its parts were more important than its looks. Dale had already drained all the gasoline from the tank to feed his generator.

I stopped laughing, though, when I overheard Rick talking to his wife. Lori showed pretty well with her annoyed whispering that she didn’t like him bringing up Merle being left behind in Atlanta. Of course, nobody would want to worry about Merle. Nobody cared about him, even though he brought fresh meat to the group every now and then. I didn’t want to heart it and get annoyed, I had much in my mind already, so I occupied myself with helping to unload the gallons of water from Shane’s car.

The two I had just taken fell heavily to the floor at the sound of screaming. The kids, I recognized instantly – were scared and calling for help. The knife was in my hand and I don’t even know how it got there as I ran, along with the others, to the direction of the yelling. The four kids came running in our direction, Lori, Carol, and Miranda falling to the ground in relief to hold them as the others kept running to the woods.

“What happened?” I asked aloud when the men disappeared from view.

“It’s eating a deer!” Sofia cried.

Following the others, I found them not too far ahead, gathering around the form of a solitary walker, bent down to the floor and devouring a dead animal, unaware of the humans around it. It took Andrea and Amy arriving and gasping aloud – of course! – to call its attention. The male walker got up and growled just a moment before being finally attacked.

I stood on the side watching as the six men beat it down to the floor until Dale finally cut its head off with a rusty axe.

“Goddammit guys,” I told them as they got silent, breathing hard. “Did you forget how to kill a walker?”

“It’s dead now, ain’t it?” Shane retorted, seemingly pissed off.

“It’s the first one we’ve had that close in a while,” Dale spoke darkly, breaking the discussion he foresaw coming. “They never come this far up the mountain.”

“Well, they’re running out of food in the city, that’s what,” Jim opined.

Once again they were all alarmed by a noise coming from the woods. I wasn’t much, the sound was not dragging like a walker’s. It seemed like someone walking surely on dead leaves, from the sound of it, hidden by foliage. Oh, it was Daryl, for sure, returning from his hunt, and the deer was probably his. Weapons were raised, waiting for whatever it was to show up and be probably beaten up, just like the walker had been. My knife hadn't even been raised, unlike the other’s weapons. First I saw the crossbow appear from behind a rock, and then Daryl.

He stopped, startled by the reception. “Son of a bitch!” was his hello, just as the others relaxed and started pacing around. “That’s my deer! Look at it! All gnawed on by this filthy,” he kicked the headless body, “decease-bearing,” one more kick punctuated it, “motherless, poxy bastard!” Some blood gushed out of its chest cavity at the last kick.

“Calm down, son,” Dale told him and I knew that would not help at all. Daryl was really pissed. “That’s not helping.”

“What do you know about it, old man?” He approached Dale with fast steps, irritated to the root, Shane motioning his rifle between the two of them. “Why don’t you take that stupid hat and go back to On Golden Pond?” He turned again to the carcass and I held in my laughter. How does someone come up with a movie reference in a moment like that? “I’ve been trackin’ this deer for miles. Was gonna drag it back here to camp, cook us some venison.” At that, he started taking his arrows out of the dead animal and looked up, effortlessly finding me among the group and nodded. “No veal again, I’m ‘fraid.”

I smiled calmly at him, all heads turned to me.

“What do you think?” Daryl moved on, crouching by the deer. “Do you think we can cut around this chewed up part here?”

“Can’t eat that now,” I answered what all the others clearly thought by their shaking heads.

“Fuckin’ shame,” he got up. “I got some squirrel, ‘bout a dozen or so. That’ll have to do.”

The walker’s head groaned, opening its eyes. I had forgotten it would be still alive, for it was no danger anymore. The blonde girls who had been standing next to me cried out in disgust and turned away to flee the scene. I shook my head, eyes rolling.

“Seriously, when are they gonna get used to it?” I asked nobody.

“Come on, people! What the hell?” Daryl snarled and pointed the crossbow down at it, shooting without even a second to aim. “It’s gotta be the brain, don’t y’all know nothing?” he bragged, taking a few steps towards me, squirrels hanging off his shoulders.

“Hey,” I said and he nodded in acknowledgment. “Can I talk to you?”

Hearing it, all the men started leaving us alone, returning to the camp, clearly running away from what was to come. Daryl watched them all leaving and waited in silence, eyebrows furred in worry.

“Where’s Merle?” he finally asked.

“He used again,” I crossed my arms. “He took some coke with him on the run and snorted it up in the store, while we were all surrounded by walkers.”

“Fuckin’ Merle…” Daryl mumbled.

“Yep. Started shooting rifle rounds from the roof, attracting even more dead from the street. We were fucked already and he was making it even worse. We were downstairs and ran up to try and make him stop, and then a fight started between him and T-Dog. He yelled racist things, T got mad, and Merle beat him up,” I summarized and Daryl only groaned in annoyance at his brother, a hand rubbing his dirty, sweaty face. “He probably got a broken rib or two. Then Merle took a gun out and pointed down at his face, threatening to shoot. He didn’t but was talking about taking the leadership of the group, that nobody was to question him. It was fucked up, Daryl, real fucked up, he was outta control. I think he only didn’t shoot because I talked him out of it, but there was no way he was gonna calm down and not make things worse. You know that.”

Jaw tight, brows furrowed, Daryl nodded, making me continue the story.

“New guy handcuffed him to a pipe.”

“What? Who’d have a handcuff lying around?”

“He’s a sheriff. And Lori’s husband. Carl’s dad.”

“What?” he asked again, louder, a little high-pitched. “Ain’t he dead?”

“They thought so. He’d been in the hospital, woke up in the apocalypse and was wandering around Atlanta when he got surrounded by walkers, started shooting them for protection, got even more around in front of the store, trapping us in there, and ended up taking shelter in an army tank.”

Daryl laughed a quick, bitter, but genuine laugh. “Now ya just fuckin’ with me!”

“I wish!” I also smiled, but it faded quickly. “He was Shane’s partner in the police, that‘s why he had a handcuff.”

“Holy fuck. And then what?”

“Then Merle sat there, unable to move, to come down from the high, while we all tried to find a way to get outta there. I even went down to the sewers with Morales, but there was no way out.”

“Fuck, Sam, I told ya not to go!”

I looked down, arms falling to my sides. “I know, and I’m sorry Daryl, but it’s done now. I went there and it all went to shit. Rick and Glenn had to get covered in a walker’s guts to smell like them and be able to go down the street, walk among them all to get a truck and rescue us.”

“They did that?” he asked, impressed.

“They saved our lives. Well, it was the Sheriff’s fault we were trapped in the first place, but he ain’t done that on purpose, he was shooting to protect himself. But yeah, they walked among like a million walkers and got us outta there. But –” I paused.

Daryl took one step closer to me to speak gravely, “Where is Merle, Sam?”

“Up on the roof,” I blurted out.

“What?!” he yelled and walked away from me, pacing a few feet away. “He was left there? Why the fuck didn’t you take him with? What the fuck, Sam?!”

“Stop yelling and let me explain!” my voice also raised but I felt it shake, and my eyes were burning. I couldn’t stand having Daryl mad at me.

“Go on then!” was his last shout.

“T-Dog had the key. Then the truck was coming back to the store, we had to run, the walkers were breaking in, there wasn’t much time. And, fuck, he was desperate to go and dropped the fuckin’ key,” I felt a tear fall down my face.

He paused, frozen for a moment, before whispering angrily, “He dropped the key?”

“It was a fuckin’ accident, I saw it. I’m fuckin’ pissed at him too, Daryl, but I know he didn’t do it on purpose. He then ran and I was going to stay there with Merle, I knew you’d come back for the both of us later.”

“But ya here!” he yelled again. “What the fuck happened?”

“He didn’t let me stay. Nearly punched me with his free hand, started yelling at me to go, his face was about to blow and he was kicking and spitting. He made me run, Daryl.”

He stopped to stare at me then. I scrubbed my face angrily at the tears that ere escaping. I could feel my heartbeat on my temple. When I spoke again, my voice was a bit more controlled.

“I told him we’re going back for him and locked the door to the roof with a padlock. It’s safe, the walkers can’t get up there. So yeah, he’s still there, handcuffed, all we gotta do is go get him back.”

He nodded, chin up. “Ya damn right I’ll get him back. But ya ain’t. You not going.”

“Oh, not that again, Daryl!” I gesture widely with my hands. “I told him I’d go, I even promised him. You can’t make me stay!”

“Just watch me,” he threatened and walked away, shoulder nearly bumping mine on the way back to camp.

“Hey, Daryl?” I called and he stopped a distance from me. “Who’s Georgia?”

Something changed in his eyes as I said the name. “Why d’you ask?”

“Merle called me that. When he was yelling at me to leave, he called me Georgia.”

He was silent then, standing there, staring at me, biting on his lower lip. After a few seconds, he took a few steps back to where I was standing.

“We had a sister,” he started quietly. “Georgia. Bit older than me. Got sick and died at seven.”

“Shit,” I whispered, looking down. That was some overwhelming information.

“He called you ‘Georgia?’”

“Yeah. He was – well, you know… Out of it. High and all.”

“Yeah,” he nodded quietly. “Must be it.”

After a moment, Daryl turned around and left again and I followed. He stormed into the clearing where all the people were gathered around, waiting to see what was going to come from my conversation with him. He looked directly to where Rick was standing with Shane, T-Dog, and Glenn and pointed a finger at them.

“Fuck you all!” he yelled. The man straightened up in attention. “Just tell me where he is, so I can go get him!”

Unlike anyone expected, it wasn’t any of the men who answered, but Lori, under the shade of the RV. “He’ll show you. Isn’t that right?”

Rick nodded, eyes squinted under the sun. “I’m going back.”

* * *

"Ain't no fuckin' way you goin'!" Daryl’s voice thundered into the back of the truck, loud and filled with anger, startling the fuck out of me. "Get the fuck outta there!” and he slammed his hand onto the metallic truck floor. "Now!"

I had never heard him talk like that, not directed to me. He had yelled at Merle countless times, at Shane and at things in general, but never at me, not until minutes ago when I told him about Merle. To be on the other end of his hatred now froze me in place for a moment, backpack falling unnoticed to the floor.

"Didn't ya hear me?" he slapped the floor again. "Now, Sam, get out!"

"What the fuck, Daryl?" I said as I found my voice. "Calm the fuck down!"

"I'll calm down when ya outta there. Come on!" he yelled, but reached a hand out for me anyway, beckoning me to take it.

I took a moment looking at his hand before deciding to take it. As Daryl helped me down out of the truck, not that I needed it, of course, I saw Rick and Shane approach, sure steps and puffed chests.

“Is everything okay here?" Rick asked, looking from me to Daryl and back carefully. "Heard yelling."

"Stay out of it, Rick," I barked extending a hand. "No need to take the handcuffs out."

Before he could say anything else, I grabbed Daryl's arm to pull him away from them. We went around the truck to stand in front of it, away from prying ears. Checking we were alone, I turned around so fast it startled Daryl, my finger pointed up at his face.

"Don't you ever talk to me like that again," I said in a low, dangerous voice. "I don't wanna hear ya yelling at me like that, much less in front of the others, do you hear me?"

"I don't care who heard it!"

"But I care!" I lowered my hand. "You know what happened to Merle! I don't want anyone thinking you're like this, ‘cause ya ain't! What the fuck was that about? You never talked to me like that!"

"Yeah, hadn't realized how fuckin' careless and stubborn you are! The fuck ya thinking? I told ya not to go and ya did anyway, behind my back! Could've died out there! Could be lost like Merle!"

"I gotta get him back! I left him there, I promised I'd go get him, so I'm going. I'm going, Daryl!"

"No. I'm going. Imma keep your promise."

"But Daryl –"

"Just fuckin’ listen to me for a second, or that too hard for ya?"

"What?!”

"You’re pregnant," his voice was low and firm and rooted me on the spot. Eyes wide, I stared up at him, not sure what to think or say. So I didn't. I remained quiet, eyes unable to tear from his, mouth dry, dreading to admit it, taking away any reaction I knew I should have. "Ya havin' a child," he spoke again, even lower, but a little gentler, although his jaw was still set. With my continuing silence, he reached out for my hand, taking it in his a bit abruptly and with a strong grip. It grounded me somehow and I breathed again because I had simply forgotten to do that in the past few seconds. "Enough hiding it, Sam. You gotta start acting like it. You'll still fight when ya have to, but if I can help it, ya ain't. You don't have to. If you don't want people to know, alright, your call. But I know, and I ain't gonna let ya risk your life again, or that kid's."

I let out a ragged breath that came out painfully and looked down, feeling an uncomfortable pricking in my eyes. Daryl made a move to let my hand go, but I suddenly needed it to keep me grounded, so I grabbed his hand strongly before it could slip away. Looking down, I cleared my throat before saying anything.

"How long have you known?" I asked him in a whisper.

"Not sure how long. Ya been sick every night, eating weird, I don't know... I just figured.”

"I wanted to tell you..."

"Whatever,” he shook my hand out of his. “Ya owe me nothing."

"No, Daryl, I do,” I looked up at him again. “I wanted to, really. I just... Wasn't ready to tell, face it, you know... It'll be a problem for everyone here... But all I knew was that, as soon as I decided to tell, it would be you first," I paused and looked at him, and laughed awkwardly. "Guess it kinda worked out. You really are the first to know –" I paused, alarm rising in my eyes. "Does Merle know?"

"Nah. Don't think so. I didn't tell anyone either."

"I know,” I told him softly. "I'm sorry, Daryl."

"Whatever," he stated firmly before turning away.

“Just – Daryl?” and he turned again, silently. “Be careful out there. Just... don’t die, okay?”

Teeth sinking into his bottom lip, he nodded, averting my eyes and spoke as he turned one more time. “I won’t.”

Watching him retreat, I lost the fight against the tears. Covering my mouth, I let it go quietly, unable to fathom why I was crying. Guilt for not having told him, making him figure it out on his own, and losing the opportunity to demonstrate just how much I trusted him more than any of the others. Relief that now he knew, now I didn’t have to hide it anymore, now I would be able to talk about it, at least to him. Fear for the pregnancy being real. And more, a warmth in my heart, admiration for Daryl, because damn, the man was full of surprises. How could he be so explosive and angry most part of the time but still be so observant as to notice what absolutely nobody else had? Was he observing me that closely? Did he care that much?

I took a minute, cried it out, breathed deeply, dried my face, squared my shoulders and, controlling my breathing and features, walked back to the clearing where I immediately found Daryl by the fire organizing his arrows. I sat on a rock by him, not saying a word even as he stared at me for a moment, also quiet.

“Could you just tell me why?” Shane was eagerly talking to Rick as they both approached. “Why would you risk your life for a douchebag, like Merle Dixon?”

“Hey!” Daryl said from where he was standing, arrows in hand. “Choose your words more carefully.”

“No, I did. Douchebag’s what I meant,” Shane looked at him and stole an irritated glance at me, as well. I held his gaze. “Merle Dixon,” he mumbled with his eyes going from me to Daryl and again before looking back at Rick. “The guy wouldn’t give you a glass of water if you were dying of thirst.”

“What he would or wouldn’t do doesn’t interest me,” Rick answered loud enough for us both to hear. “I can’t let a man die of thirst. Me. Thirst and exposure. We left him like an animal caught in a trap. That’s no way for anything to die, let alone a human being.”

“So you and Daryl?” Lori asked, disdain dripping from her words. “That’s your big plan?”

I looked down, afraid Rick would look at me to see if I was going. From the corner of my eye, I saw Daryl’s annoyed glance at him as he shook his head, leaving no space for arguments. Rick then looked at Glenn, speaking to him with his eyes, not with words.

Glenn didn’t want to go and said so, but was convinced otherwise. T-Dog also decided to go, as I had never doubted. It would be four men.

“It’s not just four,” Shane started darkly. “You’re putting every single one of us at risk. Just know that, Rick. Come on, you saw that walker! It was here, it was in camp! They’re moving out of the cities. They come back, we need every able body we’ve got. We need ‘em here, we need ‘em to protect the camp!”

“It seems to me what you really need most here are more guns.”

Oh, wait, guns? I raised my head to look at Rick and asked “That bag you had before the tank?”

“Yeah, the bag was filled with weapons. Six shotguns, two high-powered rifles, over a dozen handguns. I cleaned out a cage back at the station before I left. I dropped the bag in Atlanta when I got swarmed.”

“Bag’s still sitting there then,” I said, getting up from the rock. “You go get Merle and get the bag back,” and I looked at Shane, “guess that’s a good enough reason for you, Shane. For them to go back?”

After the silence that followed, when Shane clearly changed his mind about them going, Daryl snorted an angry, bitter laugh. “Apparently a bag of guns’ more important than a fuckin’ person.”


	15. Day 62, part 2

Sunscreen was probably still needed in the apocalypse. The unforgiving sun rays did not stop burning unprotected skin only because society had come to an end. Our little only female's group down at the quarry felt it clearly, burning hot skin coated in sweat. Every few minutes, one of us would splash a handful of water on our faces to refresh a little. Piles of clothing lay next to them, washed and to be washed. I had not given my clothes to the other women to laundry. I hated the idea of making them take care of my personal hygiene. I planned to do it later, alone, so nobody would even offer to help. Now, I was there with them, rifle in hand – although it had only six bullets in the magazine – guarding their left side. Close to there, a sparse patch of trees blocked any view of possible incoming walkers.

On our right and a bit behind, by the end of the dirt path that connects the camp to the water, Ed was also taking guard, smoking one cigarette after another, a ridiculously big sweat stains under his armpits, sulking and complaining in low groans about being down there under the sun.

A little bit farther, Shane was playing in the water with Carl, pretending to try and catch frogs, entertaining the child. I observed them for a moment. I knew why Shane was doing that; Carl had been worried about his dad going back to Atlanta after having only found him the day before, miraculously returning from the dead, and Shane was distracting him from worries a child should not need to have. I didn’t really like Shane very much, but this was nice of him.

“Can someone explain to me how the women end up doing all the Hattie McDaniel work?” Jackie asked, eyeing Shane as he laughed and had fun like a child.

As she twisted a piece of cloth, sitting on a rock, Amy completed smiling, “The world ended, didn’t you get the memo?”

“It’s just the way it is,” Carol accepted, after looking back at Ed, in a small voice. “But I do miss my Maytag.”

“I miss my Benz,” Andrea added after a moment of thought. “My sat-nav…”

“I miss my coffeemaker,” Jackie joined, “with that dual-drip filter and built-in grinder, honey!”

Amy also added, “My computer… And texting.”

“Parkour,” I pitched in. “Jumping up walls and rails and the flips. Having my legs up in the air…”

There was a moment of silence until Jackie’s sassy tone completed, “I do miss having my legs up in the air!”

Andrea and I laughed, while Amy lowered her head with a shy smirk.

“I miss my vibrator…” Andrea mused.

Carol looked around one more time, checking her husband was far enough away and admitted: “Me too.”

We all roared with laughter now – except for Carol, who despite not laughing aloud, did have a big smile and was poking her tongue out at the others. As she laughed, I noticed that that was actually the first time I was seeing Carol smile. She looked so much prettier smiling, it was a terrible shame she didn’t often have reasons to do so.

“What’s so funny?”

Ed had approached, flicking away his cigarette, his reek following close. The laughter died instantly and I took two or three steps closer to the women, just in case.

“Just swapping war stories, Ed,” Andrea answered; the energy around turning heavy from one second to another.

He stood there, behind the four women, not saying anything else. They were sitting down by the edge of the water, all of them turning their heads to look at him hovering there, bothered. A few feet away, Lori was approaching Shane and Carl, unaware of their little situation.

“Anything you need, Ed?” I asked as I approached even more.

“Nothing that concerns you,” he snapped turning his head just enough to speak in my general direction, and then looked down at the others again. “And you outta focus on your work. This ain’t no comedy club.”

He lit up another cigarette as Andrea got up to her feet, challenging demeanor, barefoot on the dirt and a wet, twisted shirt in hand. “Ed, tell you what. You don’t like how your laundry is done, you are welcome to pitch in and do it yourself,” she advised. “Here!” and she tossed it for him to catch. He did and in one single motion, threw it back strongly at her, hitting her on the chest.

“Ain’t my job, missy.”

“Andrea, don’t,” Amy tried also standing. It was clear she knew her older sister well.

“The fuck _is_ your job then, Ed?” I interrupted. “Don’t see you doing anything useful here other than smoke and sit on your ass.”

“Well, it sure as hell ain’t listening to some uppity, smart-mouthed bitch,” he looked at me but pointed at Andrea. “Tell you what, come on, let’s go!” he ordered, looking down at Carol, who jumped to her feet instantly.

Andrea raised her voice, “Carol, you don’t have to –”

I took one more step and stood between Carol and Ed. “She don’t need to go anywhere with you.”

“That’s none of your business!” he spat. “Come on now, you heard me.”

Andrea and I turned to Carol at the same time, Andrea pleading, “Carol, don’t…”

“No, please,” Carol cried in an almost whisper. “It doesn’t matter, I should…”

“Hey!” Ed shouted and we turned to him again. “Don’t think I won’t knock you on your ass just ‘cause you’re a girl, all right?” he pointed a fat finger at me. “I had enough outta you already. You stay the fuck away from my wife! Now come on now or you’re gonna regret it later.”

“So she can wander around with new bruises tonight? We’ve all seen them, you fuckin’ coward!”

“Stay out of this! Now come on!”

Andrea and I – and I never really got along with Andrea, but at this moment she was my partner – had all but made a barrier between Carol and Ed, who seemed to be fuming more by the second.

He spat a few more insults at us before reaching out and grabbing his wife’s arm strongly, starting to pull her away.

“Ed, please!” she sobbed.

“You don’t say a word!” he yelled at her face. “You don’t tell me what, I tell you what!”

As if in slow motion, I watched helplessly as Ed raised his hand and slapped his wife across the face, the loud noise deafening me to anything else. Voices got muffled, the edges of my sight turned red. Before I knew it, I had grabbed Ed’s wrist, pressing my thumb strongly to his pulse point, my fingertip sinking into his nerves. His hand opened automatically and Carol’s arm slipped away. I knew there still was a confrontation around and that Ed had turned to me, but the seconds seemed to stretch as he soundlessly yelled and spit down at me even as his arm rose above his head once again and started descending towards my face. The heel of my hand reached his nose from bottom-up before.

I saw him clutch his nose and scream at normal speed once again, taking a few unsteady steps backward, spitting blood and insults.

“Oh, wow!” I heard some of the women say but didn’t recognize who it was. I could also hear Carol crying, asking if Ed was alright and saying she was sorry. Carol didn’t know, but she was making me even angrier, making me understand just how under Ed’s hold Carol really was, how much he had been hurting not only her body but also her spirit.

“You fuckin’ bitch!” he yelled and I remembered clearly when only two months ago I had hit a man just like that and he had yelled the same. Maybe men should get a bit more creative than trying to insult someone. I smiled at the thought and Ed’s face went even redder, not only from the blood that oozed out of his nose but from pure rage.

“I’m gonna wipe that fuckin’ smile right off of ya!” Hand curled into a tight fist, he plunged at me, missing my face by inches as I turned to my right and avoided it and didn’t miss another second to throw my own right arm over his, his forearm suddenly secure under my armpit. As I put my whole body weight over his limb, Ed bent his knees, groaning. The other women would tell me later that they didn’t even see it happening. I threw my leg over his arm as I kept tight hold of his hand, making him nearly hit the ground. With one more strong push, Ed rolled over his own body, falling heavily with his back onto the ground, my legs now around his left arm and over his chest.

“Alright!” I told him a bit breathless and pulled his arm even tighter against my own chest. “Now you and I are gonna have a little chat!”

He groaned wordlessly as he tried to escape, but I didn’t worry. I knew with the training I had that escaping an arm lock was nearly impossible. Not two steps away, Andrea and Jackie held Carol, who tried to go help her husband – although they held her carefully and as gently as possible under the circumstances.

“ _I say_ your days as a woman beater are gone,” I kept talking. “ _I say_ ya never gonna lay a hand on her again. _I say_ ya even give her a _cross look_ and ya gonna have to deal with _me_! Do ya hear me?”

“Fuck you!!”

“A-ah, wrong answer!” Left hand still holding his, I raised the left and lowered it solidly straight onto his already broken nose.

He yelled out loudly in pain, the sound echoed by Carol’s cries.

“Guess ya not listening to me! I got all day, ya know? Nothing else to do and I’ll tell ya something, I’m not as uncomfortable as it looks right now. Can stay here for a _long_ time, believe me.” I stretching the “o’s”. “Only thing that will make me let you go is if you apologize.”

“Wha’? Lemme go, fuckin’ tramp!”

“Little more respect with the fuckin’ tramp, alright? Bit more force and I’ll break your arm. But I’m sure you’ve figured it out already, huh?” And to make a stronger point, I pulled his arm even harder.

He screamed, “No! No, stop, _stop_!!”

“Alright, since you asked. Now, you apologize or we’ll stay here. And ya gonna get yourself a fracture,” and I added in a conversational tone, “you imagine what a fuckin’ arm fracture would be like these days? No doctors, no x-rays, no cast, no pain meds?”

“No, don’t! Stop it, ya cunt!”

“Cunt?” I asked. “Hell, not gonna let ya call me that!” I punched his nose once again, making him groan in pain nearly continuously now.

“Just make sure he can still breathe,” Shane’s voice called my attention. He was now standing with the other women, a worried look on his face, even though he didn’t approach to try and make me stop. “Ya know? All this blood in his airways?”

“Got it,” I told him and stole a look from Carol, who was crying but had stopped trying to get away and help. “Now, Ed, where were we? Oh, right, I think you were about to tell your wife you’re sorry, ain’t that right?”

“Fuck you!”

“Wrong answer!” there was one more punch. “Ya making all sorts of wrong choices here, Mr. Peletier. Now, that woman over there, your loyal wife, she deserves better. She puts up with all your crap, with you berating and beating her, and she’s still there, by your side and taking care of your useless ass. The woman is a saint, you know that? Me? I’d have killed you. You hear me? I’d of kill you the first time you raised a hand at me. So don’t even for a _second_ doubt that I will break your fuckin’ arm and leave you to bleed out and feed the walkers!”

He screamed when I forced his arm again, now to the point where if I forced it just a bit more, the bone would snap. “Alright, alright! No, please, don’t! Please!”

“Are we making progress here, Ed?”

“ _I’m sorry!_ ”

I looked up at the others, my own eyebrows raised, especially at Carol, who among the tears and desperation, had a look of pure perplexity.

“She’ll need more, Ed. Elaborate!”

“I’m sorry!”

“I’m sorry, _who_?”

“Carol! I’m sorry, Carol!”

“I’m sorry, Carol, _for what_?”

“Just – please!”

“Wrong!”

“No!!”

“Again! I’m sorry, Carol, _for what_?”

“For hitting –”

“Na-ah! Full-sentence! I’m sorry, Carol, _for what_?”

He hesitated for a moment, ragged breathing, and I raised my hand again, preparing for one more punch. “No, no, no!” he was able to flinch even under the arm lock. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry, Carol, for hitting you!”

There was a moment of silence. Shane crossed his arms with a triumphant smile, even though he tried to contain it. Carol restarted crying, looking down as Andrea let go of her arm and paced around, hands on her head, breathing heavily just an instant before she laughed. Jackie and Amy had stunned expressions and didn’t react much to Ed’s declaration.

“Alright. There ya go. Not so hard, was it?”

“Lemme go!”

“Yeah, we did have a deal. Just one more thing though!” I punched his nose once more, “This is for calling me ‘bitch’, ‘tramp’, ‘cunt’, whatever the fuckin’ else you’ve called me. And this!” I did once more and he screamed. “Is just because I hate your guts.”

I let him go and was up in a second, his round, bleeding form clutching his arm on the ground. I breathed heavily, hands resting on my hips. “I want you to remember, Ed,” I told him in a low, dangerous voice, bending down a little. He turned his head back to look up at me, and I whispered, “That you’ve just been beaten up by a pregnant girl.”

Nobody else heard. Ed’s nose was bleeding, puffed, and swelling, almost reaching his widened eyes. Carol reached him then, taking hold of his uninjured arm and decidedly avoiding looking at me. Her face was wet with tears, but she wasn’t crying anymore. “Are you okay?” she asked her husband, her voice cold. “Come on, I’ll help you up.”

He said nothing as he allowed her to carry his weight up the dirt path.

Andrea reached me as I stood there, observing Carol hoisting him away, followed closely by her young sister and by Jackie. “You ok?” Andrea asked me.

I snorted out a laugh, “Never better!” and made a wrist movement, joint popping loudly. “Hand hurts a bit, but it’s nothing.”

“That was…” Amy started hesitantly, making the others look at her. “Incredible!”

“You, my dear, did what all of us wished we were able to do,” Jackie smiled. “Thank you.”

“You’ll have to teach us,” Andrea took hold of my shoulder and motioned me to start walking up the path, the others following. “How did you know how to do that?”

Laundry all but forgotten by the water, they heard me tell them about the self-defense classes I had been taking for years and that yes, I promised after the sisters asking a couple more times, I could teach them. I took the better part of the next hour to be able to get rid of them. They had pulled Lori and Miranda closer to tell them what had just happened, I had been cheered a bit more – although Lori suppressed a few comments that were written all over her face, and I recognized she did not approve of the violence. When I finally convinced the others that I had something to do, no specifying what, I went back to my tent and zipped myself in.

It felt like a furnace inside, the early afternoon sun turning the small, synthetic covered space into a dry steam room; impossible to stay in for too long. I needed it, though. Bending down, resting hand on my knees, I groaned in distress, emptying my lungs. I felt dirty for having to lay my hands on someone, for it to have been something necessary to do. I had never wished that, but the moment I saw Ed raising his hand at Carol, I knew I would never be able to control it. I saw myself doing the defensive movement once again in my mind, saw myself falling heavily on my back on the hard, dirt ground, and I hated herself. My right hand let go of my knee to curl around my stomach.

“Sorry… I’m sorry… Please be okay, I’m sorry…”

* * *

“Hey, Shane?” I found him sitting alone close to the unlit fire in the center of camp. “A word?”

“Shoot,” he said lowering his head again to whatever it was he was doing, not moving as I approached rapidly.

“Mind telling me why Jim’s tied up to a tree?”

“Mind telling me where the fuck you were when he was making himself get tied up to a tree?” He said it without looking up at me, nearly unmoving, tense, his voice even.

I took one step closer and crossed her arms. “If there was a situation that needed me, you should’ve sent someone to get me. Doesn’t matter what I was doing, it’s personal.”

“Was beating up some defenseless male ‘round here personal?”

I couldn’t believe he had actually said such a thing and had all kinds of answers on the tip of my tongue, but when he looked up at me, he had an amused smile on his face. Relieved, I barked a quick laugh. “Shit, I thought you were serious for a moment.”

“He had it coming,” Shane said and got up. “I’d’ve done it but you was faster.”

“Yeah, I thought it would be more meaningful if he got beat by a _girl_.”

“Spot on,” he stopped looking at me, his smile purposefully charming, head a little bent down, eyebrows up, eyes fixed on mine.

Ok, nope.

“Shane?” I asked and he only lifted his eyebrows more, wetting his lips with the tip of his tongue. “ _Jim_?”

“Oh, right,” he shook his head, looking away, coming back to his senses, I guess. “He was hallucinating or something. Too much 12 o’clock sun; got dehydrated… Started digging holes in the ground, frantic, wouldn’t stop, the kids got scared. He’d of pass out right there if he kept going, so I had to force him to stop.”

Arms still crossed and brow furred, I nodded slowly. “Did he drink some water after?”

“Couple of sips, didn’t want more.”

“M’kay. Alright, thanks,” and I turned around to go uphill to check on him.

“Hey, Samantha?” Shane called and I turned around at the strange name, frowning curiously. He had the look back on his face. “That was badass. Really, I didn’t want to admit it, but… You’re – damn girl – wouldn’t want to be on your bad side.”

I crooked a smile, chin going up, and turned away again. “My name is not Samantha!” I called out aloud, waving a hand at him.

“No? What is it then?”

“Just Sam!”

* * *

I knew mine was not the only mind that was away from there, the camp and the group around the fire. Lori kept letting her gaze slide to the entrance of the camp every ten seconds or so, Carl by her side following her gaze every now and then.

They should have been back by now. Rick, Glenn, T-Dog… And Daryl, bringing Merle with him, with probably even more hatred in his heart towards the members of the group. It was going to be a lot of work when he returned, but it was work I wanted. I wished they’d come back soon… They had been gone all day, something must have happened. Damn, Daryl had promised me he wouldn’t die, but does anyone have a choice these days?

Just like Lori, I got distracted from the worry when Carol approached the group, Sofia holding her hand. She looked around looking for a place to sit and I gladly scooched over. I smiled at her, genuinely happy to see her there, welcoming her to sit among the rest of the group for the first time since we all have gathered. Ed was nowhere to be seen, and Carol did not seem worried about it. Sofia sat by her side and accepted a plate of fried fish – Andrea and Amy had spent hours on Dale’s small boat down at the water and had returned with a least a dozen of them. Carol gave me a little, restrained smile, but it was enough for me to feel my heart grow lighter.

Minutes later, Shane also joined, followed by Jim, now free from his tree restraint. Jim smiled uncomfortably at us, an apology on his gaze, and he also received a serving of fried fish. The air seemed to unwind a bit then, with Jim acting normal again and Carol finally socializing with the others. For a moment, it all seemed fine, part of the group simply away temporarily, not in danger, about to come back at any moment. Food passing around, the fire lit, conversation rolling calmly. Somebody had asked Dale about his watch – which he winded religiously every night, and he explained serenely.

“A father said to a son when he gave him a watch that had been handed down through generations… He said ‘I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire, which will for your individual need, no better than it did mine or my father’s before me… I give it to you, not that you may remember time, but that you may forget it for a moment, now and then, and not spend all your breath trying to conquer it’.”

Silence followed his little speech, people nodding ceremoniously as if absorbing the words.

“Dude, I didn’t get a word you just said,” I broke the silence and was followed by laughs from the others.

Carol smiled, shoulder shaking a bit, and looked at me for just a moment.

“It’s Faulkner,” Dale smiled. “William Faulkner. Maybe it’s my bad paraphrasing.”

* * *

For a long time to come after that night, most of the people of the group would wonder if different decisions would have brought us a different outcome. Andrea would always think about how life would have been if Amy had not needed to get up and go to the RV to use the toilet, or if there was toilet paper there, not forcing her to come out again when the walkers attacked. I would wonder how Ed would behave in the group after the correction I gave him if he had not been alone in the tent at the moment.

Right then and there, though, there was no time for anybody to think about anything at all. Amy was screaming at the door of the RV, one walker with its jaw attached to her arm, groaning even as it chewed on her flesh. The kids screamed for their moms just as every single person got up, reaching for weapons, more walkers emerging from the trees. Shane was the first to shoot, followed closely by myself.

“Get the kids, get down!” Shane was shouting and Lori, Carol, and Miranda gathered the four children.

 _Six rounds. There’re six rounds on the rifle_ , I reminded myself, _four on one gun, the second is empty. Ax hanging from the belt,_ I thought, even as I shot the first walker in the forehead.

Screams all around mingled with walkers’ groans.

 _Two_ , I hit one just above its ear. _Three_ , the walker who had been making its way to the women and children fell. _Four, five_ , both who were above Amy’s fallen body slumped. _Six_ , the female close to the tents’ head literally blew off.

The empty rifle was all but thrown to the ground. As I struggled to get the revolver from the shoulder holster, Jim hit away a walker who had been getting dangerously close to my back with a bat. No time for thanks, I unlocked the gun and kept on shooting.

 _One_. I looked around to locate my people. Shane was close to the children and their mothers.

“Shane, take them to the RV!”, I shouted as loudly as I could. _Two._ “Stay together!” _Three._ “Andrea, behind you!” I wasn’t heard. Andrea was falling to her knees next to Amy, desperation blinding her to anything else. _Four._ The empty gun also fell to the floor.

I ran to join the others who were slowly and as one single body approaching the RV, and I took the ax out of my belt, burying it into the softened skull of the closest walker. There were no more gunshots, no more bullets to be fired, and yet at least twenty walkers approached the group. Jim and Morales had bats, I had an axe and a knife, Shane would probably have one too.

Not enough. Not even close enough.

“What do we do?! What do we do?!” Lori was chanting within the crowd.

A new gunshot turned all the heads to the entrance of the camp, by the cars. It was dark over there, but the shots kept coming, the walkers falling one by one. I had never believed in princes rescuing damsels in distress, but it sure as hell felt like it was happening right now as I saw Daryl appear into the light and shoot walkers on and off with a whole new rifle, among the other men. Fuck, my heart.

Never ceasing to fire, he made his way up the clearing, eyes scanning the group to find me. I dropped the axe into one more dead skull as I ran towards him, meeting him halfway. He threw me the weapon he had been using, at the same time sliding another one from his back. Turning my back to his, I started shooting, the number of walkers thinning, the desperate screams turning into scared, mournful sobs.

It took no more than a minute for silence to fall over the camp. No more shots. No more walkers. Carl ran towards Rick, crying into his arms, Lori’s expression shocked.

“You alright?” Daryl turned to me in a swift motion.

“I’m okay! You?!”

“Fine. Who’d they get?”

“Amy.”

Nobody talked anymore. Andrea’s desperation muted any word that could have been said now. Amy was gone, blood loss from a neck bite draining her life quickly. Jim’s dismayed whisper “I remember my dream now… Why I dug the holes…” was the only sound for long minutes. Children cried into their mother’s arms, most of the group still keeping their guarded stance, looking around, ready for any stray walker. None came, though.

Sensing the danger had passed, I started shaking and bent to rest my hands on my knees after resting the rifle on the ground, breathing heavily. What if – and I knew thinking of what-ifs wouldn’t help at all, but I couldn’t help it – they all had not arrived back just then?

“Merle…” I whispered next to Daryl and straightened up. “Daryl, where’s Merle?”

Biting angrily into his lip, Daryl turned to me, icy eyes and ragged breath. “Gone.”

“ _What_? How?” I gripped his upper arm to impede him from walking away, even though he didn’t even try.

“Found his hand there. He chopped it off and left.”

My hand slid from his arm and he turned away, disappearing into the trees. I stood there for countless minutes, mouth hanging open, my mind a mess of thoughts, fears, and guilt.


	16. Day 63

e sun had arrived as ruthless as always before we knew it, nature ignoring the tragedy that had happened just hours before. Other than the four children, nobody had slept. They had been tucked in together in one of the tents, Lori, Carol and Miranda staying with them for the remainder of the night.

Sofia had the worst time to sleep of them all. She had been with her mother when both of them, accompanied by Shane, went looking for Ed, who had seemed to disappear during the whole ordeal. His lifeless form laid at the entrance of their destroyed tent. Carol had been paralyzed; a rollercoaster of emotions surely taking over her mind, but Sofia had cried and had not talked much about it. Ed’s body had been dragged away and the tent taken down after Carol removed hers and Sofia’s belongings, and she still had had no reaction. Now she sat on a camping chair facing the RV, staring at where Amy’s lifeless body was being mourned closely by her sister.

I was sitting close to her on detached car seats, Lori, Dale, and Shane also around, silent. After sighing in defeat, Lori got up from her seat and walked over to Andrea, slowly and carefully. She crouched down by her and stayed there for just a couple of minutes before returning and sitting back just as quietly.

A little away from them, Daryl, Glenn, Morales, and T-Dog were taking care of the walkers’ corpses, perforating their brains one more time just to be sure none of them were about to get up again and attack, before dragging them over to a fire. They were sweaty, bloody, and reeking, but everybody else was thankful they were doing it.

“She still won’t move?” Rick asked when he joined us.

“She won’t even talk to us,” Lori answered gloomily. “She’s been there all night. What do we do?”

“Can’t just leave Amy like that,” Shane rumbled quietly. “We need to deal with it, before – before it happens.”

“I’ll tell her how it is,” Rick said before stepping towards her.

“Leave her,” I said firmly, but also quietly. Rick stopped and looked down at me, an eyebrow raised. “It’s her sister. Her choice.”

“Amy will turn any –”

“She knows it,” I looked up at him. “Andrea knows it, and she’s choosing to deal with it like this. I disagree, I’d’ve finished it hours ago, but Amy’s her sister. She’s hers to decide.”

Rick stared at me challengingly for a long moment before looking down, staring at Andrea for another moment and looking back at me before nodding reluctantly.

“Ya can’t be serious,” we all turned to look at Daryl, who had joined with the pickaxe resting on his shoulder, but he was looking at me. “The dead girl’s a time bomb.”

“Ya think I don’t know that?” I rose to my feet.

“What do you suggest?” Rick asked, a smaller group gathering to talk about it.

“Take the shot!” Daryl spoke clearly. “Clean, in the brain, from here. Hell, I can hit a turkey between the eyes from this distance!”

“Maybe we should, but she’s Andrea’s”, I insisted, trying to make him see my point. “Not our decision. She turns, we’ll have enough time to react. We’re watching, we’ll see it happen. You remember how it is, they get all noisy and rise slowly. There’ll be time.”

Nobody said anything, watching carefully as Daryl stared angrily at me, clearly disagreeing but not saying anything. He turned around after a few seconds. I hated that I’d been making him angry in the past few days and hoped we’d recover from that.

“You reap what you sow!” he growled aloud for anyone around to hear. “Ya’ll left my brother for dead. You had this coming!”

He turned his back and stormed away before he could see how much it stung me to hear it. _I left Merle. I had this coming._ I sat back down on the car seat, eyeing Amy carefully, wondering if anything I had done differently would have avoided it all from happening. The youngest adult member of the group was gone, along with Ed – who was not a huge loss, I admitted – and the lives of everybody else had been hanging on the line only hours before. It all could have been over, just like that.

“A walker got him!”

Once again, all heads turned. Jackie was hurriedly stepping away from Jim, her voice denouncing how terrified she was. “A walker bit Jim!”

“I’m okay!” Jim said defensively.

Everybody was on their feet as one, rounding Jim suspiciously as he looked around and repeated he was okay. _One more. No, not one more!_

“Show it to us,” Daryl said as he returned to the group, pickaxe in hand.

“No, back off,” Jim cried as the men surrounded him. Scared, he bent down and grabbed the first tool he found on the ground, a shovel, and motioned it threatening to attack.

“Easy Jim!” Shane approached with his own shovel in hand.

“Just show it, Jim!” I tried a bit behind the others, but Jim only attacked the air again, desperation clear in his eyes. I looked at T-Dog, the only one standing behind Jim and nodded at him, eyes slithering from him to Jim. Nodding sharply once, T-Dog rushed over and held Jim from behind, the shovel falling to the ground, in a tight bear-hug around his chest.

“I’m okay! I’m okay!” Jim continued chanting as Daryl approached and lifted his dirty shirt. There, very clearly, a bright, red jaw shaped mark marred his stomach. He was let go immediately, everyone having seen it. He kept repeating he was okay, his tone declaring even he didn’t believe his words.

“You sure you’re okay?” I asked him nearby, but not getting close enough. “You’re bit, how can you be _okay_?”

“I don’t know! I – I just – I ain’t feeling anything. I’m okay, I swear.”

“Fuck!” I turned around, hands gripping my head. “How does this work? Anybody seen this before?” Everyone around me shook their heads, negative answers on worried faces. “I’ve seen people dying from bites, but they died right away!”

“Died losing blood,” Daryl’s tone was still angry. “Bite in the neck, like D and Owen that night.”

“And Amy just now,” I completed him.

“Jim’s not bleeding enough to die fast,” Rick joined them, followed closely by Shane.

“But he gonna. Anytime now,” Daryl told them darkly. “I say we shove a pickaxe in his head and the dead girl’s and be done with it.”

“Is that what you’d want if it were you?” Shane questioned him.

“Yeah, and I’d thank you while you did it.”

“I hate to say it,” said Dale, who’d been quiet so far. “I never thought I would, but maybe Daryl’s right.”

“Jim’s not a monster, Dale, or some rabid dog!” Rick muttered angrily.

“I’m not suggesting –”

“He’s sick! A sick man. We start down that road, where do we draw the line?”

“Line’s pretty clear for me,” I said with crossed arms. “No tolerance for walkers –”

“Or them to be!” Daryl completed.

“Yeah, but he’s still Jim, not a dead body about to turn,” I looked away from Daryl to everybody else. “I don’t know what to do with it.”

“What if we can help him?” Rick asked. “I heard the CDC was working on a cure.”

“I heard that too, heard a lot of things before the world went to hell,” Shane said by his side.

“What if they’re still there?” I mused.

“Man, that is a stretch right there…” Shane disbelieved.

“Why?” Rick asked right back. “If there’s any government left, any structure at all, they’d protect the CDC at all costs, wouldn’t they?”

“Could be a good shot. Maybe some kind of shelter, protection…” I agreed as I my rolled tense neck.

“We all want those things, alright?” Shane gesture to me, but moved on, looking at Rick. “I do too. Now, if they exist, they’d be at the army base. Fort Benning.”

“And you never spoke about it ‘til now, why?” she asked.

“Thought we were safe here, alright?” he barked at me, raising his voice. By my side, I could feel Daryl tense, getting a bit closer to me, and I was relieved to know even if he was mad at me he still had my back. “But now we ain’t!”

“Fort Benning is a hundred miles away from me, if not more,” I said firmly; voice also a little up, but letting past his moment.

“That is right. But it’s away from the hot zone.”

“What _is_ the hot zone?” Lori asked as she stood between Shane and her husband. “How do we know it’s safe?”

“I think it’s our best shot. If the place is still operational, it’ll be heavy-armed, we’d be safe there.” Rick stated firmly.

“The military was on the front lines of this thing,” Shane still clearly disagreed. “They got overrun, we’ve all seen that.”

“The CDC is like a fort, ain’t it?” I asked looking around and didn’t pay attention as I saw Daryl looking at Jim over his shoulder. “They contain diseases and cures inside, it’s also heavily guarded. Might be just as safe as a real Fort, and might have a way to help Jim, with infirmary, labs, whatever the hell they have in there.”

“Yeah, you go looking for aspirin, do what you need to do,” Daryl started by my side and bent down to get his pickaxe from the ground and started walking backward. “Someone needs to have some balls to take care of this fuckin’ problem!”

Raising the pickaxe, he lunged towards Jim. I was running without thinking of it, Rick and Shane close behind. I reached Daryl faster than he reached Jim and placed myself between him and the sick man, hands raised. Daryl stopped immediately, staring angrily at me once again, just as Rick pointed his gun at the back of his head, the sound of it uncorking loud in everyone’s ears.

“We don’t – kill – the living,” the sheriff roared.

After one more moment of looking at Sam, breathing hard in fury, Daryl looked back at Rick, weapon still raised. “That’s funny coming from a man who just put a gun to my head.”

“Daryl,” I called and he turned back. I didn’t get scared with his look and moved on calmly. “Come on, put it down. We’ll decide what to do, there’s still time. Come on.”

Sneering, Daryl threw the pickaxe to the ground, noisily, and stormed away once again. Rick stepped towards Jim and I, but I stopped him.

“People have got to stop pointing guns at each other around here,” I stared up at him. “Let’s just save it for the walkers, shall we? Got enough problems already.”

Placing the gun back into his waist holster, Rick nodded at me. “As long as people don’t threaten each other with other weapons, sure.” With that he rounded me and reached Jim, reaching out for his arm. “Come with me.”

“Where’re you taking me?” he asked, terror in his voice.

“Somewhere safe.”

The group had dispersed. I looked around, trying to find Daryl, but couldn’t see him. Maybe it was for the best. He was too angry, too hot-headed; perhaps staying alone for a while would help. I knew _she_ needed to be alone; my chest ached in agony, too much was happening, three losses in the same day in a group that was already small was too much. The camp that had been something like an oasis of safety so far – the only walkers they had seen up there had been on the first day, when they’d cleared it all up, and then just at the edges of the set perimeter – never this close, never a real risk to our lives. It wasn’t safe anymore, that much was clear. Sitting back against the car seats, and raising my hands to cover my eyes, I thought about Rick and Shane’s opinion on where to go now.

I asked myself whether I was disagreeing with Shane’s position just because I always tended to disagree with him, or if I really believed Rick was right. I had wondered before if the CDC place Daryl, Merle and I had heard about on the radio during those first days at their house, was still running. I had hoped so, but only because maybe they’d find a cure – but I had never wished to actually go there. Seeing our situation now – the stink of the dead bodies burning not too far away; the four children sitting quietly together, eyes wide and traumatized; Dale sitting on the floor by Andrea, the lively woman who was now the image of sadness over the loss of her sister; the threat of a new attack at any minute hanging over the group’s heads – I decided the CDC was where I would want to go if the decision was solely mine.

Getting up and popping my neck again, I found my axe where I had left it by the seat, on the ground, and decided to help the others at finishing the remaining walkers spread along the ground. There weren’t many left, just four of five that had been dragged and gathered in front of the RV – Ed Pelletier included. Heading there, I saw Daryl had returned to work, pickaxe sinking into a walker’s skull. I stopped, though, when I saw Carol approach Daryl, looking down at her husband’s dead body. This far, I couldn’t hear what she said, but I decided to not go there, taking a step back, when Carol reached out, asking Daryl for his pickaxe. He handed it to her after a moment of thought, not saying anything. Both Daryl and I watched as the woman stared at her husband for a moment, pain all over her face, before sinking it heavily into Ed’s head, an involuntary groan following. Three more times she did it, a mixture of crying and groaning and raging over whatever she had in mind at that moment.

My heart ached for her, my throat tightening and eyes pricking. I could only imagine what Carol was feeling, but my heart felt for her anyway. After Carol had stopped, Ed’s head all but gone into a mass of blood and brain, I took a step towards her, even without knowing what to do or say, but Carol gave Daryl back the pickaxe, nodded at him and left, walking towards where I was standing. She gave me a sad, tight-lipped smile and reached out a hand. I took it and Carol squeezed it for a quick moment before letting go and keeping on her way without a word. She sat down by Dale on the car seats.

I looked up to where Daryl was still standing and holding the pickaxe. We gazed at each other for a few seconds; his expression already a bit softened, relaxing more as we looked at each other. It was like we were talking without words about our recent disagreements. I was about to go with him, help him with the last walkers, maybe talk about our disagreements, but I never did.

A groan sounded around camp. Raising the hand holding the axe and looking around frantically to find out what had happened – everybody else around also became alert from one second to the next, guns and other weapons at the ready – I found Andrea holding the walker that used to be her little sister barely away from her face, Amy’s jaw opened, eyes dead and hungry. A circle around the two of them started closing slowly but surely, people with weapons drawn, prepared. Andrea was talking to Amy, surprisingly calm, and nobody else had to intervene. A gunshot cursed loudly after, finally the last one to be fired in camp.

* * *

The day did not seem to be getting anywhere near better. The holes Jim dug up were useful, in the end. Discussions of whether we should burn or bury the bodies only delayed the act we all seemed to be subconsciously avoiding. Andrea insisted in burying Amy by herself, but Dale ended up helping her. There was sadness, people crying and a heaviness of spirit like there would be in any real funeral. When it was over and we walked away, back towards camp, the silence was weighty and uncertain. There seemed to be nothing else we had to do now, nothing urgent to be resolved before finally making a decision. I walked alone, a few steps behind the group, until Daryl looked back and spotted me. He slowed his steps and when I reached him, he stopped, a hand touching my arm briefly.

“What now?” he mumbled gravely at her.

“We gotta leave. It ain’t safe no more.”

“And where? Opinion’s divided ‘round here; Fort Benning like Shane wants or the CDC like Sheriff Andy Taylor over there?” he pointed with a nod of his head to where Rick and Lori were quietly discussing something, probably same thing Daryl and I were discussing.

“I think the CDC,” I told him, arms crossed as we stood close together. “If we’re gonna try to get help for Jim before he kicks it, it’s gotta be there.”

“What if he dies and turns on the way there? Inside the RV with people around?” Daryl sounded annoyed yet again, but his voice was still low. “I don’t wanna risk that happening. Heard Dale saying he’s got a fever already, a bad one. It’s a matter of time.”

“We’ll keep an eye on him. Daryl, he’ll die first, and then turn. So, if he does die, I’ll stab him in the eye myself, right away, never give him time to turn. Really, _this_ ain’t worrying me.”

“Nah. Nah, no way.” Daryl took a step back, shaking his head. “We’re traveling, you’re in the truck with me,” he said pointing at me and at himself as he spoke, “like it was before. It was you, me, and Merle, not gonna be just me there now. Anything happen on the road, you’re in the truck with me.”

He finished and stared at me, hard eyes. Arms crossed, I returned the look, wordless for a moment before nodding, my eyes still on him. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Okay!” I raised my voice. “I’ll ask Glenn or T to take care of it. It’s okay.”

“Fine.”

“Fine. The CDC then?”

“Yeah, ‘suppose,” he paused, voice calmer now. “Maybe we can get some doctor to look at you too… You know.”

“Oh,” I looked down, one hand unconsciously rising to cover my stomach. “Yeah… I guess.”

* * *

The RV was nearly as hot as the tents used to be under the sun. The windows were open, but no wind seemed to relieve the heat. Carol was inside, sitting by Jim, drying the sweat from his feverish brows.

“His fever’s worse,” Carol told us Lori, Rick and I entered the tight space.

“You need anything?” Rick asked the man.

“Uh… Water?” he asked raspily. “Could use some water…”

“I’ll get some,” Lori smiled sadly. “Carol, you wanna help me?”

Nodding wordlessly, Carol got up and left with Lori as I glued myself to the bathroom for them to pass. When they left, I squeezed into the space with Rick, we both taking seats by the sick man.

“You save a grave for me?” Jim asked looking from one to the other.

“Nobody wants that…” Rick shook his head gloomily.

“It’s not about what you want,” Jim tried to smile but failed. “That sound you heard? That’s God laughing while you make plans.”

“Jim,” I started, my voice firmer than how I felt and reached out to take his warm hand in mine. “We want to try and help you. Okay? We ain’t gonna give up on you.”

“You ain’t?” he looked at me, now really smiling. “Not what your boyfriend seemed to want before…”

“Not happening. You don’t worry about that,” I squeezed his hand, not bothering to correct him.

“What we want, Jim, if God allows, is to get you some help,” Rick also tried some reassurance.

Jim tried to say something at that, but a wave of nausea took over him. I took hold of a bucket that had already been lying there for that exact purpose and held it for him as he threw up, coughing and spitting for a long moment.

“Watch the mangroves,” he said breathing hard as he settled down on the thin mattress again. “Their roots will gouge the whole boat. You know that right?” he looked at me, eyes glassy. “Amy is there swimming. You’ll watch the boat, right? You said you would.”

I heard him talk, quietly, my chest tightening painfully at his words. He seemed not to be there anymore, out of nowhere. I stole a look at Rick, who wore the same sad, scared expression I was sure I did. Squeezing his hand yet again, I looked again at Jim. “I’ll watch the boat. Don’t worry, okay?”

“Okay…” he whispered before closing his eyes and falling asleep.

Rick and I stayed there for a moment longer, quietly, looking down at our sleeping, sick friend. I then looked at him again and nodded. “I’m up for the CDC. I’ll talk to the others.”

Rick smiled. “Thank you. Shane doesn’t think we should…”

“Shane does not make as many decisions as he thinks he does ‘round here,” I said darkly and got up, rounding Rick to go out of the RV. He followed me without a second thought and, as we reached the door, Shane’s voice just outside greeted us.

“I guess I’ll just add it to the list of habits that I’m breaking, whether I like it or not.”

“What habits?” Rick asked from behind me as we stepped out.

Shane turned around on the spot he’d been speaking to Lori and looked from Rick to me and back. “Just talking about my need for a plan. So, what is it? Are we leaving or not?” He then looked right at me, speaking to me more than to Rick. “Maybe we should just stay here. We could hang some more tin cans.”

“Tin cans didn’t help last night, Shane, you know that, come on. Tin cans didn’t avoid walkers getting to us and eating up Amy and Ed, and now Jim’s –” I stopped that train of thought abruptly. “It ain’t safe. It was never supposed to be a fixed camp; it was always supposed to be temporary. No better timing to get the fuck outta here.”

Silent and licking his lips, Shane nodded, but looked back at Rick just the same, hoping for some different opinion.

“We can’t stay here,” his friend told him. “We both know that.”

“I was just telling Shane I think we should trust your gut,” Lori said to Rick, but he didn’t answer for a long time, looking fixedly at Shane. I knew better than to say something now, some trust issues clearly going on between the former police partners.

“Let’s go do our sweep,” Shane told him and Rick nodded, them both turning to leave. Rick looked and nodded at me before leaving and I reached out to give his arm a slap in understanding. Rick was going to try and convince Shane of what I had already decided was going to happen.

Night was already approaching by the time they came back. I had spent the last few minutes packing my stuff and telling Daryl to do the same because we would be leaving in the morning. My tent still up was the last thing I’d need to pack in the morning. The whole group was around the low fire – Andrea had been nodding off on a folding chair – when the two men came around. Rick crouched down by his son and Shane crouched down a bit apart from them, but closer to me. He looked at me solemnly and nodded, clearly giving me the _authorization_. Giving him that, I also nodded and sat straightened in my chair.

“So, uh,” I started, making everyone look at me. “We went through Rick’s idea of leaving camp and trying to find help in the CDC. I agree with him. I know there’re no guarantees, that we don’t know what we gonna find there and that it is a risk, but also, I mean… We all know that _everything_ is pretty much risk these days. Staying here, after what happened last night, is no longer an option. Jim’s hanging by a thread, so we’ll try the CDC before anything happens to him, maybe we can find help. Not only for him but for all of us. So…” I paused for a moment to look around and finished decidedly, “so if everybody agrees, we’re leaving first thing in the morning.”


	17. Day 64

The breaking of a twig under my foot snapped in the silence, making Morales – rifle in hand for he’d been on his guard duty for the last few hours before sunset, a few meters away into the woods from the tents area – turn around sharply, eyes wide in attention.

“Hey, just me,” I told him in a whisper, but as clearly as I could. “No walker ‘round here tonight, I hope…”

“Oh, Sam, hi… Didn’t see you coming,” he breathed relieved, a little smile showing his relief. “You’re up early.”

“Didn’t even sleep,” I told him as I stood by his side, looking out at the darkened park. “You should go, have some rest. I won’t sleep anyway if I stay in the tent, might as well do something useful.”

“Nah, you sure?”

“Sure, yeah. Go on. We have a big day coming, but sleeping now’s hopeless for me.”

“Well, if that’s alright…” he handed me the rifle with a thankful smile and turned around. “Just holler if you need something, alright?”

“Don’t worry, go to sleep.”

Morales took a couple of steps away before stopping, his back to me, looking down, and stood there for a moment. I looked back at him, confused by his gesture until he turned around, unsure expression, and took one step back towards me.

“Actually, Sam, I – I want to talk to you about something.”

“Yeah?” I rested the rifle over my shoulder. “Sure, go ahead.”

“It’s just, uh – Miranda and I have been talking about it for a couple of days already, and – well, after what happened the other night, we, uh…”

“Mo? Is everything alright?”

“Yeah. It is, really. We have family in Birmingham. You know, Alabama? It’s actually Miranda’s family, her father and two of her brothers and their families.”

“Have you heard from them?”

“Miranda talked to her brother, Carlos, when the lines still worked. Everyone was fine, they were all together in a house that he said was safe. But nothing after that. We’re hoping they’re all still there.”

“So you’re leaving the group.”

“Yeah.”

I got quiet for a moment, thinking of how the group was slowly thinning. I nodded slowly. “You thought this through?”

“We did.”

“If something happens on the road, you know Miranda can’t fight.”

“It’s 150 miles between here and there. We’ll stop for nothing, I don’t think we’re gonna take more than five hours to get there.”

“God, Mo…” I looked down, shaking my head. “Fuck… If we – God, if we didn’t have the urge to get help for Jim, I’d – I don’t know, I’d ask people for us to go with you. Take you there, to Birmingham, find your family.”

“I’d never want you to do it, Sam, even if Jim was alright. Not gonna take ya’ll out of your ways to help us.”

“You’re one of us. You, Miranda and the kids, you’ve been one of us since this group started, of course I would go with you. And the others too, I’m sure.”

Morales smiled sadly at me, “I know you would, and I appreciate it. But we’ll be on our way when the sun comes up.”

“Shit, Mo…”

“I know. It’s all screwed up, but we do need to find the family. Rick could find his among all this shit, maybe we can too.”

“I hope you do. And if something happens, if you don’t find ’em, Mo, you know where we’re going. Try to go back and to the CDC, try to find us. If you get back to Atlanta, try the radios, if we’re close enough –”

“Sam,” he stopped me, a less sad smile on his face now, as he took one more step and placed a hand on my arm. “I know you worry. Thank you for that, for caring, and for everything. You’ve been a great friend and a good leader to this group; I think you’re what this group needs. You think rationally, but you’re also all heart, and that balance seems to be so necessary these days. So thank you for taking care of the camp, of my family… But I’ll take it from here.”

I was grateful for the darkness around me hiding my wet eyes. I nodded, not trusting my throat to work properly, and allowed him to hug me. He said nothing else as he let me go, still smiling, and then turned around and walked away, the darkness around the tents engulfing him.

* * *

Daryl had been waiting for me by the truck while I arranged the last preparations with Dale and Glenn, who shared the front seats of the RV where Jackie and Andrea would be in, helping to take care of Jim. I went to the back, into the small bedroom, where he laid shirtless and sweaty, eyes closed tightly. He reassured me that he was fine enough and that we should go.

I didn’t believe him for a second.

I approached Daryl – the truck was filled with our things and Merle’s bike, which had been parked there this entire time, and smiled at him with tight lips.

“Ready?” he asked.

“Yeah, nothing else to do,” I answered and looked around as the cars engines around were started one by one.

“Well, then get in and quit stalling,” Daryl mumbled and turned around to enter the driver’s seat.

“Daryl?” I saw him turn around, half into the car and raise his eyebrows in question. “What if he comes back? Merle?”

Daryl shook his head and finished settling in, the door still open. “He ain’t,” he said firmly. “Merle stole the truck and left, if he was gonna come back, he’d’ve been here by now. He ain’t coming back.”

I stood looking at him for a moment, making him question me with his eyebrows again, and then sighed and went around the car. Daryl closed his door just as I sat by his side. The cars started moving, the RV opening the caravan. I closed the door and Daryl waited silently for all the cars to leave before moving, closing the line.

“Think it’ll work?” Daryl asked breaking the silence several minutes later, already on the road. “The CDC?”

“Guess it might. Anyone who’s in there wouldn’t just stop looking for a cure, y’know… It’s just ain’t something people’d just give up on. I think it’s a good chance.”

“And for Jim?”

I breathed out heavily and lifted my legs to rest my feet on the front panel. “Hours ago I’d say so… He seemed to be holding up fine, but now after I talked to him before we left…” I looked at him, worry clear on my face. Daryl looked at me quickly and then again at the road. “He’s burning up. Never seen anyone with such a high fever… And he’s in pain, says it’s all over, can’t even say where it hurts. It’s a huge infection, I mean…”

“You don’t think he’ll make it.”

“Not if we have to stop for any reason. Not if we have any kind of emergency on the road. Not if we take longer than what we’re planning to get there…”

“Ya know what that means,” he told me darkly and looked at me from the corner of his eyes. “He ain’t gonna make it,” and as he said it I looked out the window, thoughtful. “And if he turns?”

“Glenn’ll do it. Talked to him before. Carol and Jackie are taking care of him, if he dies, they’ll warn him and they’ll stop the caravan, and Glenn will kill his brain before he wakes up.”

Daryl nodded and said nothing else, the truck going silent if not for the engine noise and the tires hitting the asphalt for a while. Breaking the silence and changing the topic, I asked Daryl what had happened on the day they’d been out looking for Merle. Daryl started telling me slowly, but soon he grew more excited about the tale of how they’d been attacked by a group of Mexican kids who seemed dangerous, but turned out to be the watching over of a group of elders, taking care of them and some little dogs. I laughed at the surprise of imagining a tiny, gentle old lady interrupting the violent interaction and taking them inside by the hand, only to find Glenn helping to take care of an old man having an asthma attack.

Daryl had just finished telling how they’d found their truck gone and had to return to the quarry on foot – when they found the camp under a walker attack – when the RV in front of the line of cars signaled that it had to stop. Smoke was coming out of the hood as everyone parked and oozed out of the cars.

“I told you we’d never get far on that hose,” Dale was saying when we approached. “I said I needed the one from the cube van.”

“Can you jury-rig it?” Rick asked him as he fanned out the smoke from around his face.

“That’s all it’s been so far. It’s more duct tape than hose, and I’m out of duct tape.”

“We’ll find a good hose in one of those cars on the road,” I told them and the men looked at me. “Might be a gas station on this road somewhere.”

“Yeah, I see something ahead,” Shane said with the binoculars over his eyes. “Gas station if we’re lucky.”

“Would you go there, Shane? Take Dale to find the right thing?” I asked him as he lowered the binoculars to look at me.

“Sure. You’ll hold up the fort?”

“Go ahead,” Rick nodded. “Hey, T-Dog, will you go with them to back ’em up?”

The man nodded and the three headed to Shane’s jeep.

“Daryl, would you go up the RV to take guard as we wait?” I asked him in a low voice and he nodded, climbing up the side ladder immediately. “Glenn?” I called and he turned from where he’d been standing, staring at the smoking engine. “Keep an eye on the road, back Daryl up?” he nodded and got to his position. “I’ll go check on Jim.”

Rick followed me in and what we found inside was just heartbreaking.

“No, no, no –” Jim as crying as we approached the too hot space. “Christ, I can’t’!” he said as he looked up from one to another. “My bones… My bones are like glass. Every little bump, God…This ride’s killing me!” and at this he reached up and grabbed my hand in a surprisingly strong grip, his hand dripping wet in sweat. “Leave me here. I’m done, just leave me… I want to be with my family.”

Rick sat by his side, “Jim, your family is dead. I don’t think you know what you’re asking.”

“Your fever’s been making you delirious, Jim,” I completed, my other hand covering Jim’s on mine. “You’ve been out of it more often than not since last night.”

“I know. Don’t you think I know? I’m clear now, I know what I’m sayin… but in five minutes, I won’t be. I know what I’m asking, I promise you I’m conscious, okay?”

“Okay, Jim, that’s good. But are you sure you’re aware of what you’re suggesting? You want us to leave you here?”

“Yes, I want this. Leave me here. I won’t make it there and I’m just getting worse in here, and this road, I just can’t, please. But hey," he looked up at me, his eyes tired, red, and pained, but also reassuring. "That’s on me, okay? My decision, not your failure. Please, Sam? Rick?” he pleaded and I looked down, my eyes shutting tightly and my fingers squeezing Jim’s hand. “I’d get out there on my own if I could, but I don’t think I can walk… I need you to help me. I don’t want to endanger any of you, and we all know I’m gonna die soon, and if I turn in here…” he started crying, “I don’t want that, please, I don’t want to harm anyone… Just leave me, please, please…”

I had my own eyes wet with unshed tears. “Shh, shh, Jim, it’ll be okay, just calm down, it’s okay.”

Rick looked at me questioningly and I looked back, nodding once at the direction of the door after a second. I let go of Jim’s hand and got up, leaving the RV with Rick right behind me. My heart seemed to have shrunk in my chest, it felt so tight.

“Guys?” I asked at the group that had been gathered nearby. They all joined me and Rick silently. “So, uh… About Jim,” I took a deep breath and looked up rapidly to see Daryl standing way above us all, also listening to me. “He ain’t gonna make it. He’s too sick and he feels like he’s dying,” I crossed my arms and looked down taking a deep breath before stating firmly, “He’s asking to be left behind.”

“Left behind?” Jackie asked, startled. “What do you mean?”

“He wants out of the RV, and he wants to be left to die alone, so he won’t endanger any of us when he does.”

“It’s what he says he wants,” Rick backed me up.

“And he’s lucid?” Carol questioned.

“He seems to be,” Rick nodded.

“He is,” I corrected him. “We’ve seen him delirious, this talk we had now was not it, it was clear.”

“And what do you think?” Glenn asked me.

“I think we should respect his choice. If that’s what he wants, we gotta go with it, no matter what our opinion is. If he was hallucinating or anything, I’d never do it, I’d never leave a man to die like this, but he’s conscious,” I told them firmly and turned to Rick. “Wouldn’t you say so?”

“Yeah… I agree, I think we should do as he says.”

* * *

I couldn’t hold it anymore. I’d been holding it in for days already, since I left Merle behind, and I couldn’t take it anymore. At least I wasn’t ugly-crying, I was able to keep it nearly silent, but I didn’t mind to hide it from Daryl. We were alone anyway, and at least it was only him watching me softly break down. He looked at me from the corner of his eyes every few seconds, uncomfortable and unaware of what to say. Long minutes passed as the caravan slowly slid along the road, carefully avoiding stray walkers that tried to reach the cars. The radios were quiet, and even from a different vehicle I could feel the sad energy flowing from the others.

We were silent all along, while my tears stopped falling and I dried my face with the back of my hands.

“Alright?” Daryl asked her quietly.

I took a moment to answer, still looking through the window, the wind on my face, eyes squinting to protect from it. “Merle’s gone. Two people died, bitten by the dead. An entire family decided it was safer to be away from this group… And now I’ve just abandoned a man – for the second time, I abandoned a man,” I turned to look at him, who was staring at the road and stole a quick glance at me as he chewed on his lower lip. “No, I ain’t alright. Ain’t nothing alright.”

“You should stop being so hard on yourself,” Daryl told me gravely. “Ya ain’t done anything alone, and you’d’ve done different if ya could. Had no choice.”

“These people chose me from the beginning to take care of things… How can I not be responsible?”

“Yeah, well, ya should step down then,” Daryl looked at me, his voice a bit louder and firmer. “Got enough problems of your own to deal with. You’re worrying about the group and the camp and the-fuck-ever all the time, not worrying enough about yourself and your kid.”

“There’s nothing I can do different to take care of the kid,” I retorted with the same tone of voice. “What should I be doing? Going to the doctors and having my prenatal exams?” my voice rose instantly. “Eating my vegetables, taking vitamin tablets? Doing fuckin’ Lamaze classes with the daddy?”

Daryl stared at me in shock for a few moments before turning to look at the road again, wordless. I crossed my arms and looked out the window again, breathing hard.

“Who’s the guy, anyway?” he asked her after another couple of minutes in silence.

“Just some guy. Didn’t matter then, don’t matter now.”

“Pro’ly dead,” he mumbled and I snorted a fake laugh in annoyance.

“You really think I should step down?”

“Should do whatever ya want.”

“Yeah, sure, but what you think?”

“There’s Shane and this Rick guy… They’ve been trying to see who’s got the bigger dick since Rick arrived, both trying to be in charge, and ya gonna get caught in the middle.”

“Women’ve been stepping down to let men command for fear of getting hurt for centuries now,” I told him in a deadpan voice. “I’d only do that if I really do think one of ‘em’s better than me as a leader for the group. Ain’t doing this for fear or anything like that.”

“Never said it’d be for fear. Said it’d be to take care of yourself. You’re entitled to.”

I didn’t answer, only looked forward to the road and curled my legs under myself on the passenger seat, slightly turned towards Daryl.

“What’s with the bird?” he asked, breaking the silence suddenly a few minutes later.

“Huh?” I snapped out of her thoughts. I’d been considering carefully what Daryl had said, about stepping down and letting Rick and Shane settle it themselves and take care of things. I knew Daryl had a point, that every day that passed I was a bit ‘more pregnant’ and the signs would soon start to appear. I’d get big, I’d have trouble being fast, I’d feel tired. But my lack of trust in Shane felt bigger than all of that. If the CDC didn’t work, if we had to stay on the road looking for a place, I was adamant on not to letting Shane be the one to make the important choices. I was still unsure about Rick, but he definitely didn’t feel as bad as his police companion. If I decided to step down – and that was still an enormous _if_ in my mind – I’d decidedly prefer Rick over Shane.

“The tattoo. The hummingbird,” Daryl clarified nodding towards it with his chin. “Why’d you get it?”

I smiled, “I got thirteen tattoos in total,” I confided and he looked at me with his eyebrows raised for a moment before looking again at my arms, eyes dancing over them. I laughed, “You counting?”

“You don’t got thirteen there!”

“Who says they’re all in my arms?”

He looked back at my eyes for just a split second before looking ahead again with a soft “Oh.”

Oh, yeah, he was picturing it. Good.

“Anyway, I got all of ‘em, why’d you ask specifically about the hummingbird?”

“I don’t know… Looks nice,” he confessed in a low, small voice.

I was still smiling at him for a moment before stretching my arm at an angle to be able to look at my hummingbird. “The Aztecs believed their ancient warriors were reincarnated into hummingbirds so they could be around to protect ’em. They’d collect the feathers of dead hummingbirds and use ’em on little bags around their necks,” I smiled and looked at him and his puzzled face, eyebrows furrowed. “But that’s just the legend, what it really means’… Well, hummingbirds are among the smallest birds on earth – I mean, the smallest bird that exists actually _is_ a hummingbird, and ‘cause it’s so tiny, it’s got to work its little ass off to survive. Every day’s a battle, but it keeps flying in all directions with confidence and being strong and graceful.”

Subconsciously, I was smiling after I finished explaining it. After I stopped, Daryl looked from the road to my face, eyebrows furrowed in thought. I laughed a bit awkwardly at his looks and shrugged.

“Yeah, I don’t know, it just – it means something to me.”

“I get it,” he told me and I looked back at him. “The being small thing.”

At that, I laughed out loud, surprising even myself and punched his arm. “I ain’t _that_ short!”

He laughed too, a lot more quietly than me, but he did, with sound and all, and defended himself by leaning towards his door. Who was I kidding, I _was_ short. Just 4’11’’!

“Yeah, y’are! And ow! Quite strong for your size!”

“Yeah, well, that’s what the late Ed'd say.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Didn’t I tell you I beat the crap out of him, while you were gone?”

At his delight, I told Daryl all about what had happened and how much I did not regret doing it. He laughed once more – it had been twice now, more than I had seen him smile or laugh in a very long time. I adored it. _Damn, Daryl…_

We talked for a while longer before I felt the effects of having been awake all night long. The quiet lull of the motor and balance of the truck on the road made me fall asleep, head resting on my hand against the window frame.

Night had just fallen when the caravan stopped in front of the CDC’s parking lot, the last rays of light still painting the sky a dark blue. I had just woken up when the truck lost speed. I had looked around a bit lost for a moment until Daryl pointed at the building we were getting closer to.

“Don’t look good,” Daryl groaned as we stopped.

Understatement of the year. Even from inside the truck and as we all slid out of the cars, what we saw was not a scene to lift any spirits. Sandbags barricaded, abandoned military cars, and even tanks, as well as an uncountable amount of dead bodies permeating the ground. There were so many flies feeding on the corpses that their buzz was loudly audible. The smell was solid, putrid, and made it physically difficult to breathe. There was no question our group had to go through it, though. We all moved together, nobody having to be told to, stepping over corpses, guns at the ready pointing around, pieces of cloth covering faces against the reek. We reached the doors in no time; a long row of tightly closed, overhead rolling, steel white doors, which didn’t move even a single millimeter when force pushed by Shane and Rick, who had been opening the stroll.

“There’s nobody here!” T-Dog was the first to put the fear in words.

“Then why are the shutters down?” Rick asked angrily to his general direction.

Behind the group, Daryl and I kept watch and saw at the same time a military clad walker appearing from around the building. “Walkers!” Daryl warned before shooting an arrow to its forehead. Panic fell immediately onto the group like a downpour. Daryl looked at me, jaw sat in anger. “It’s a fuckin’ graveyard!”

“They pro’ly themselves inside!” I said, but I know that it didn’t sound like I believed my own words.

“It was the wrong fuckin’ call!” Daryl yelled over the other panicked words the others had been saying and turned to Rick, who was still standing looking at the doors.

“Rick, this is a dead-end,” Shane was saying, agreeing with Daryl, but still shooting him a dirty look.

“We don’t know that.”

“Babe, we can’t stay here at night!” Lori pleaded, hand tight around Carl’s.

“She’s right, we can’t be this close to the city after dark! Fort Benning, Rick, it’s still an option,” Shane stated.

“We got no fuel for that!” I approached, rifle in hand. “It’s over a hundred miles, we don’t even have any food.”

Shane placed himself between Rick and me, chest puffed, looking down at me. “What the fuck do you suggest then?” he yelled. “You wanted to come here, backed Rick up all the time, it’s on you too!”

“Hey!” Daryl pushed away strongly. “Back the fuck off!”

Deciding to try the door instead of wasting time stopping a fight, I stood by Rick at the doors and started knocking hard on it, hands and feet sounding too loud in the empty city. More walkers started to stumble on their way across the parking lot, the noise promising an opportunity to feed. People around kept asking what we’d do and Shane urged them to move away, back towards the cars.

“Rick? Fuck, Rick, this had to work,” I told in a quiet, anxious voice. “They gotta be inside!”

“We’ll think of something,” he said, sounding terrified.

Just as I took a couple of steps back to follow the group, I saw one of the few vigilance cameras above the doors make a little noise and turn towards us, exactly to the point where Rick and I were standing.

“The camera!” Rick called aloud by my side.

“It moved!” I completed.

“Oh, come on!” Shane cried angrily from behind them. “You imagined it!”

“Both of us?!” I asked turning my head to look at him.

“It moved!” Rick repeated just as Shane marched back to them.

“It’s all dead, man, it’s automatic, there’s no one in there!” And at that, he grabbed Rick’s arm and tried to drag him away. Rick shook him off strongly and kept looking at the camera. I looked around, rifle in hand, to the group and at Daryl, his unsure face telling me nothing about what he was thinking.

“If it’s abandoned, there should be no energy,” I said aloud to cover Shane’s desperate voice. “The camera wouldn’t move!”

“I know you can hear me!” Rick shouted at the camera, completely ignoring his friend.

“Everybody get back to the cars, now!” Shane turned back to the group.

“Please, we’re desperate!” Rick went on and kept pleading, mumbling loudly about how they’d be dead if nobody helped. Shane returned and started really dragging him away now, Daryl approaching to do the same to me as I still hadn’t moved. “You’re killing us! You’re killing us!” Rick was crying as the group got halfway across the parking lot.

“Let’s go,” Daryl uttered quietly and urgently, close to my ear. I felt my eyes well up, chest tightening in sorrow. “There’s nothing here, we gotta go. Come on,” he took my arm and pulled, making me finally turn around and step beside him.

The next second got mixed up with the next ones, all happening in a blur of noise and artificial light and eyes burning at the glow coming from the inside of that door, now rolled up under the loud alarm sound. Everyone was screaming, Rick beckoning everyone to come back and go through the door, people rushing, stumbling on their own feet to get in. Daryl all but dragged me because I had felt stuck on my spot squinting at the light and smoke coming from the doors. We were the last to rush in, the white lights foreign to our eyes after over two months without seeing any.

“Daryl, you cover the back!” we heard Shane shouting and Daryl didn’t think for a second before raising his crossbow and pointing out of the open door.

We were now standing in a lobby, and after those moments it didn’t seem so brightly lit anymore. It was actually dim, our eyes getting used to it. Our voices sound eerily loud in the empty, large space, our feet hitting the polished floors as we looked around carefully, guns raised and pointing in every direction. Raising my own rifle – now completely loaded again – I crossed the group to go stand in front of it with Rick. He was calling out, asking if someone was there, and I stayed quiet like the others. The sound of a gun cocking cut Rick’s voice.

“Hello!” the voice of someone unknown followed it. Everybody turned towards it, other cocking guns imitating the first one. “Anybody infected?” the voice asked just as his silhouette became visible under a threshold just under one of the many stairs the lobby had.

“No,” I answered aloud. “Nobody is bit.”

“Why are you here, what do you want?” he came out of the door, now a real person and not just a figure with a loud voice. The man was pointing a gun, but it was held lowly against his hip, not a very threatening image. His blonde hair was messy and his t-shirt ripped.

“A chance,” Rick’s voice trembled and I glanced quickly at him. He sounded terrified. I mean, calm down man, there was still so much we didn’t try! But if we wanted this man and his fellows to help us, I couldn’t just say yeah, heap us, or not, _whatever_. I had to make them believe they were our only hope.

“We know that’s asking an awful lot,” I said, looking from Rick to the man. “But there ain’t no hope at all for us out there.”

He didn’t say anything, looking at me for a moment, his face denouncing how hard he was thinking. He let his eyes wander, looking for a moment at each one of us before speaking again.

“You all submit to a blood test. That's the price of admission.”

“We can do that,” I nodded vigorously.

He lowered his weapon, body visibly relaxing. “You got stuff to bring in, you do it now. Once this door closes, it stays closed.”

He then ran across the group toward the door. Shane started shouting instructions to Daryl, T-Dog and Glenn to stand guard back out on the parking lot as the others ran back to where the bags had been left. The group worked without emitting a single word, efficiently, and in less than a minute they were all back, our belongings in hand and on our backs. The CDC man spoke into an interphone on the wall by the door, asking someone to seal it, and the door rolled down noisily, the clicking sounds of it making it clear it was being tightly locked once again. I approached him, my heavy backpack that went up higher than my head hung across my shoulders, just as Rick also went for him, the importance of speaking to this man unpostponable.

“Rick Grimes,” he introduced himself and pointed at me with his head, “Sam –”, he stopped again looking at me in question.

“Danes. Sam Danes,” I completed him reaching out a hand.

He hesitated for a moment, looking at us both, before shaking my hand and taking Rick’s as well. “Dr. Edwin Jenner,” and then he stepped away, announcing aloud to everyone else to follow him. He walked purposefully to a hefty elevator, its doors opened, and motioned everybody in. We crowded the space and the doctor entered at last and pressed a button. The doors closed and the elevator moved. There were gasps and little, quiet whimpers from nearly everyone, and I understood perfectly why. My own stomach felt like it was dropping down, the motion extraneous and the feeling of being closed up in a metal box unnerving.

“Doctors always go around packing heat like that?” Daryl cut the silence with his groaning voice, pointing with his eyebrows at Dr. Jenner’s heavy weapon.

“There was plenty left lying around. I familiarized myself. But you look harmless enough,” and he looked down at some point, most of us couldn’t see, probably at one of the two children, and smiled. “Except you. I'll have to keep my eye on you.”

Awkward silence filled the metal cabin for a while longer while it went down for what felt like minutes. When it stopped and we oozed out of it, following the doctor, we were in a long corridor, ceiling low only centimeters away from the tallest ones’ heads. We were deep underground. The doctor told us to try not to think about claustrophobia now and once again spoke to someone who wasn’t there, who he called Vi, for them to turn on the lights somewhere else.

It was there, in a very big conference-like room, that the doctor finally explained he was the only one there. There was no team, no other doctors, no staff. It was all gone. He did not go into any detail and insisted that the group fulfilled their part of the deal; doing the blood tests.

In a smaller room, he took turns drawing blood from each one of us. I had never liked needles, they made me nervous. As I sat in a gurney next to Andrea, with Jackie nearby, I turned to stare at a wall instead of watching it perforate my skin.

“It’s okay, it’ll will be over in a second,” Jenner said as he noticed my discomfort.

“But what’s the point anyways?” Andrea asked, eyeing the needle in my vein. “If we were infected, we’d all be running a fever.”

“I’ve already broken every rule in the book letting you in here,” he answered without taking his eye off the syringe. “Let me just at least be thorough.”

He removed it and pressed a small cotton ball to the little hole in my arm. I took hold of it and he let go, and I got to my feet. Without another word, Jenner repeated the procedure with Jackie, who was sitting in a chair. We remained silent as we waited.

“Oh, God…” Andrea mumbled after the needle was removed from her arm.

“Are you okay?”

“Dizzy,” she explained.

“She’s weak, and now she’s been drawn of blood,” I said as I rushed to Andrea’s side, a hand resting on her shoulder.

“She hasn't eaten in days. None of us have,” Jackie completed.

“Well, you were the last ones”, Dr. Jenner seemed embarrassed for not having thought of asking about it. “There’s food in the kitchen, we can…” he left the sentence unfinished and headed to the door, holding it open and gesturing for us to go out. I let Jackie guide Andrea to the kitchen and stopped by the doctor, still inside the door. I waited a couple of seconds until the two of them were a bit farther into the hallway and looked at him. He already had a questioning look for me, knowing I would say something.

“Uh, about this test”, I started but hesitated.

“Yes?”

“What are you really going to be testing for?”

“For infection, I thought I told you that.”

“Yeah, no, I mean…” I paused and ran a hand through my forehead. “Can you do any other test?”

“Like what? Do you need something?” he crossed his arms.

I stretched my neck to look outside and see we were really alone and looked again at him. I also crossed my arms and stood a bit closer to him. “Okay, so what I’m about to ask you is confidential, okay? You can’t tell anybody else. Please?”

His face showed just how suspicious he got within the second. “Have you been bitten and didn’t tell any of them?”

“Shh, no!” I whispered urgently. “No, I ain’t bit, it’s not that. Not that bad, I guess.”

“Well, if it’s not anything that bad then I guess alright, I can… _Not_ tell anybody”.

“Okay… It’s just, uh… I’d like you to test my blood for… Well, to do a pregnancy test”.

He opened his mouth but didn’t say anything, just nodded slowly.

“Just to confirm,” I added quietly.

“Uh, sure, uh… Okay. Will do.”

“Okay… Thanks doc.”

With that, I breathed in sharply, smiled, and slapped his arm, attempting to lighten the mood, and then left the room, rushing after Andrea and Jackie.

* * *

Eating around a table with actual plates and forks. Laughing. Just general laughing – at a child who wants to try wine, at a young man who can’t hold his liquor, at nothing, really – felt just so completely foreign, just so shatteringly out of place, that all I could do was laugh along. No wine for me – but a glass of nicely done orange juice from a packet with actual ice cubes in it did just fine. Daryl was laughing and it lit up some warmth on my face, the warmth to my face I remembered feeling when I used to have the first glass of wine of the night (a glass, a cup, a mug – whatever I had at hand). It was sad he had only laughed like that after drinking, I thought for just a moment, but then remembered him laughing with me in the car just hours before.

This was the only good time this group had ever had together, since it all began.

But it all got spoiled when Shane decided it was time to ask Doctor Jenner about what had happened there, to the other doctors and the researches that used to be there. The mood took a deep dive when, now to the silent group, the worn-out doctor told us most of the others abandoned the place to go looking for their own families and their own attempt to escape. And when the military outside got overrun, the remaining ones had, in Jenner’s own words, opted out.

The promise for comfortable cots and couches to sleep on lit up the mood once again, but it was the simple expression “hot showers” that made all of us smile, wine in their systems or not. The changing rooms with the roll-in showers were at the end of a long hallway where several doors led to small private rooms. After taking my packs to one of the rooms, halfway through the hall, I headed to the showers, taking the least dirty clothes I could find. The water was hot as Jenner had promised and it felt foreign on my skin, the first hit like thousands of tiny pins and needles poking into me. The water that fell down my body and oozed down the floor to the drain had an ugly beige shade, which turned nearly brown when I scrubbed my head, the dreadlocks requiring attention one by one. Jenner had asked us not to take too long, but it was humanly impossible to be quick. The hot water felt too good, too damn good after the first shock ceased, and now it had no color on its way to the drain.

The small hotel-like soap was nearly half the size it had been at the beginning of the shower as it was scrubbed down my stomach and it was then that I tensed once again. Looking down to confirm what my hands had felt, I noticed a bump. A small, barely visible baby bump was there. My hands rested on it, unmoving, frozen. Every fear and anticipation I’d been feeling by the very idea of being pregnant rushed through my head, now enlarged by the sudden, unannounced certainty.

Jenner would run the pregnancy test on my blood. I wondered if I should go looking for him and tell him it wouldn’t be necessary. Out of the shower, toweled dry and dressed, I walked through the hall without noticing I had done any of it.

“Hey,” I heard Daryl’s voice call and looked to my right, into an open door. Daryl was inside, next to the couch that sat by the right wall, my bag on a cot by the left wall. “We stayin’ here,” he told me.

Without thinking about my plan to see Jenner, I entered, used towel and dirty clothes held close to my chest. “You gonna shower?” I asked him with only half of my mind.

“There still hot water?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“I might.”

With that, I looked at him. I could smell the contrast between my own clean, freshly-scrubbed skin, and his; a mixture of days-long sweat, road dirt, and blood. We were all used to it by then, I was used to feeling this peculiar smell on Daryl, a smell that in any time of my life would have made me gag, but now it was just normal, just what it was.

“Daryl,” I said to make him look at me. “Go shower, seriously.”

Instead of an answer, Daryl frowned in thought and leaned in closer to me. I just stood there, bit frozen, wondering what on earth he was doing, and he just sniffed, smelling the air around my body. I could feel a little hint of wine on him, but the sour sweat mostly covered it up.

“You think you smellin’ any better than me?” he said as he backed away.

“I’m _absolutely_ sure I am!” I fanned the air where he had been.

“You think this stinks?” Daryl raised an arm and crowded onto me, our height difference placing his armpit perfectly in-line with my face. “It don’t stink, smell that!”

I screamed and tried to get away from him as I slapped his ribs, but he held on to me with the hand that wasn’t raised to keep me in place as he forced me to get a whiff of his hairy, reeking armpit. He was laughing out loud as I was screaming, although I couldn’t help but laugh with him. I had climbed over the cot when he finally stopped and retreated, broad smile on his slightly reddened face.

“Fuckin’ geez, Daryl, ya wanna kill me, throw me to the walkers, don’t torture me slowly,” I said as I lowered myself to the floor again. He had his back to me now, crouched down, fumbling into his backpack.

“Not ‘bout to kill ya, darlin’, gonna need ya fine and alive,” he got up and headed to the door, carrying a change of clothes in hand. He left the room without looking at me again, but in the hallway, he repeated aloud, “Fine’n’alive!”

My face muscles were hurting from smiling so much and I kept smiling even and I laid down in bed before falling asleep.

_Damn, Daryl…_


	18. Day 65, part 1

Daryl was snoring. Not too loud, I could probably go back to sleep if I tried, but the contrast with the deep silence of the shared room and the corridor woke me up with a start. For a second I couldn’t picture where I was, the shrieking cry of a baby that had been only in my dreams fading to nothing as I looked around trying to understand the singing crickets and cicadas’ absence. On the couch by the cot, now not reeking any sort of smell, Daryl didn’t even move a muscle, his low, constant snoring lulling my heart back to a normal beat.

A clock on the wall above the door showed it was early morning. At camp, the group would be up and about by now, woken up by the growing heat inside the tents. The silence showed it was not the case this morning. I thought it was good; these people deserved a lie in to get some rest.

I got up, though, and padded silently to the tiny adjoining toilet, where I found a small pack with a disposable toothbrush and paste. Making a mental note to put it in my bag later if we ever had to leave this place, because the toothpaste I had brought from home was being scrapped out of the package already, I brushed my teeth, drank water from the faucet and washed my face before tying back my headful of dreads. Daryl was still snoring when I quietly left the room.

Jenner was in the cafeteria, the same we all had had dinner the previous night, behind the counters filling a mug of fresh coffee.

“Good morning,” he told me with a small, forced smile. “I think I probably shouldn’t offer you coffee.”

“Oh,” I said as I stood on the other side of the counter. “’Cause pregnant women shouldn’t drink coffee?”

“Well, yeah, people say. I wouldn’t know, I’ve always focused on other areas of medicine.”

“Right. Yeah, it’s – so you got the result then.”

“Yep,” he popped after a sip of coffee.

“Right. Yeah…” I looked down with both hands on the counter.

“Mazel Tov,” he said saluting with his mug and I looked at him again, snorting a laugh.

“Yeah, thanks. Fuck…”

Jenner went silent, staring at me with his brows creased. I didn’t know him at all, but it seemed to me that he was worried and thoughtful, maybe.

“Hey, I’m the girl in trouble here having to give birth and raise a child at the end of the world. Why’d ya look like that?”

“Well... it’s, uh… That’s it, isn’t it? A child, the dead…”

“Yeah, I’m a bit more positive now that we’ve found shelter,” I crossed my arms and stared up at him. “Right? We didn’t talk about this, I know, but I was wondering how this works. I got a big group, an elder man, a child, these women who are just now learning how to defend themselves… And now I got a bun in the oven confirmed, so I’d be kinda worried if we got to go back out there. This place might’ve saved our lives,” I paused and looked at Jenner for a moment. He had rested his mug down, still staring at me. “If we don’t stay, well... Gotta be prepared for this, anyway, you know, women’ve had babies for hundreds of thousands of years in nature, living in caves, defending helpless kids from animals and whatever…”

I then took a deep breath, suddenly nervous about the prospect, contrary to my words. Having it confirmed and my otherwise flat stomach showing turned everything even more real, scarier, and the timing of the unfortunate accident this pregnancy was just stunned me.

“I must say,” Jenner started after a few seconds of silence. “I’m impressed by your positivity. Really,” he looked down, nodding to himself, lips tight.

“Okay, what is it, Doc?” I lost it, but tried not to be rude. “I ain’t blind, alright? You ain’t just worried about some random pregnant person who you met. What is it? What you worried about? You ain’t gonna let us stay here, is that it?”

He looked up quickly holding out a hand to me, “Hey, it’s – it’s nothing, ok? Just –” he started walking backward, away from me. “Don’t worry about it now. I just – I have work to do. Excuse me.”

I tried to say something but he was gone before I could think of how to persuade him to tell me that the hell was happening in his mind. Something was seriously wrong and, with an icy feeling on my stomach – maybe the child had felt it too – I was certain this shelter was not what we had dreamed of. Entering it had been a miracle, and there were no more miracles these days.

And holy fuck, I really was fucking pregnant!

“Hey, you alright over there?”

Startling out of my reverie, I saw T-Dog having just arrived, standing by the counter. I smiled, giving some poor excuse and greeting him with a smile, not mentioning any worries. Together, T-Dog and I started fumbling in the cafeteria cabinets to find something to make the group breakfast. The man was by the stove doing his best to prepare powdered eggs and I was mixing some artificial juice when the others began to flow into the space, most of them quietly. Glenn looked the worst, eventual groans demonstrating just how bad he felt. Dale, Andrea, Lori, and Carl were also sitting with bowls of old but still good cereal.

“Dude, did you puke yet?” I asked Glenn as I stood behind him, a hand on his shoulder. He groans louder and hangs his head. Carl, a mouthful of cereal, laughs at him. “If ya haven’t you should, trust me, you’ll feel better.”

Rick joined us just as T was serving scrambled eggs that surprisingly seem to be good and Lori was handing Glenn some aspirins. As they all started to eat, I leaned against the counter, sipping on my glass of juice. I was quiet with a smile so it would seem like I was following the conversations and quiet teasing going on by the table, but my mind is only half there.

I knew I was pregnant, I was sure ‘bout it, why was I feeling this now? I needed to tell them. They had to know, life was about to get shittier for everyone with a knocked-up woman and then a screaming baby. Where was Daryl, still sleeping? The eggs kinda smelled good, I wished there was bacon. Damnit, bacon.

Interrupting my thoughts, Shane passed in front of me like a storm, walking fast and hunched, quickly dismissing the good morning wishes. At the table Lori flinched, looking down at her eggs, and seemed to shrink unbeknownst to anybody other than me, the only quiet and observing one.

“Feel as bad as I do?” Rick, at the head of the table, asked his friend.

“Worse,” is all he said before turning around and heading to the table.

“What the hell happened to you?” T-Dog asked as he met Shane on his way. “Your neck?”

Shane sits nearly across from the Lori, who purposefully busied herself with her food. “Must’ve done it in my sleep.”

“Never seen you do that before,” Rick questioned as I was slowly abandoning my position at the counter and stepping around the table to stand close to Lori without having planned to do so.

Standing there I could see what T-Dog had asked about. Shane had scratch marks on his neck, as perfect as nails. The rest of the table was silent and I was glad I wasn’t the center of attention. Blood had risen to my face and my throat was tight. I was sure Lori had made the marks, simply by her reaction to Shane’s arrival. She’d had to defend herself from him, and that certainty burned on my chest like a physical blow. I remembered Ed slapping Carol – _where are Carol and Sophia? Gotta go find them, see if they’re okay_ – and the desire to do to Shane the same I did to Ed was almost stronger than me.

“Me neither,” Shane answered and stared directly at Lori. “Not like me at all.”

I then took a step closer to Lori’s back, staring at Shane, whose eyes slid up from Lori straight to me. I stopped there and held his eyes hard, my own narrowed and me head turning slightly to the left, daring him to say or do anything else or, I don’t know, _breathe._

Jenner returned to the cafeteria just then, finishing the subject. I held Shane under my gaze for seconds longer, though. I wanted him to know that, if no one else did, I had noticed and that I’d keep an eye on him. His look going even harder than before told me he got the message.

***

Seeing the image of the brain dying, and then returning to life, though only in few parts, was not exactly news to anybody. It was impressive to see the transformation occurring on the inside, though. Extraordinary brain or not, it was how happened to everybody. It had happened to Amy, it had happened to Jim by now. But we had seen it in real life, we had shot freshly transformed people in the brain to put them to rest. Andrea had done it to her own sister. The mood in the room was now densely gloomy, verging hopelessness. Though he explained the procedure in detail, Dr. Jenner never mentioned a cause.

“You have no idea what it is, do you?” Andrea voices what was everybody’s impression.

“It could be microbial…” he started, vaguely, his answer to the question very clear. “Viral, parasitic, fungal.”

“Ain’t there nobody who’d know that?” I asked from where I was perched on a desk by Daryl. “Other centers, wherever, nobody could take the – the _thing_ and analyze it to know what it is?”

“And how to stop it – kill it, more importantly?” Rick completed my question standing closer to Jenner

“There are others, right?” Carol also added her question. “Other facilities?”

“There may be some. People like me. There’s no way to be sure, though. Everything went down, communications, directives, all of it. I've been in the dark for almost a month.”

“So, it's not just here,” Andrea’s chin trembled as she spoke. “There's nothing left anywhere? Nothing? That's what you're really saying, right?”

The doctor didn’t answer. Instead, he lowered his head as he nodded, and for long seconds nobody spoke a word.

“Well, fuck,” I whispered making the others come out of their shock. Daryl stood up pressing the heels of his hands to his eyes, mumbling to himself that he intended to get drunk again.

Behind the group, among the next row of desks and computers, Dale’s voice came changing the subject and alerting the others for something that hadn’t been noticed yet. “Dr. Jenner, I know this has been taxing for you and I hate to ask one more question, but... That clock,” he pointed to a wall further away and the whole group looked at its direction. A red digital clock had just marked one hour. “It's counting down. What happens at zero?”

Once again, like it was beginning to be customary for the doctor, he took seconds to answer, looked around as if in doubt of how to phrase something. “The basement generators... they run out of fuel.”

“And then?” Rick asked him, his voice grave, but it had no effect on Jenner. He just lowered his head again and started walking away, completely ignoring the question. Rick looked up at nothing as if talking to God, “Vi, what happens when the power runs out?”

“When the power runs out,” the robotic voice started. “Facility-wide decontamination will occur.”

* * *

When Daryl entered the room we had shared the previous night, I was already shoving whatever personal belongings I had back inside my backpack.

“Hey, what ya doing?” he asked as he leaned against the doorframe, a bottle of whiskey in hand.

“Just making sure, leaving the bags ready to take and go,” and I entered the toilet, collecting the toothpaste. “I don’t like this no-generator-power-fuel thing. The way the guy didn’t even answer what’ll happen – I don’t know. I told the others to have their packs ready too.

“’Kay, I’ll just –”

“Yours’ done already,” I cut him and pointed to his bag on the floor. “Didn’t have much out.”

“What you figure is gonna happen?”

“No fuckin’ clue,” I zipped the bag forcefully and rested my hands on my hips. “But just think ‘bout it, we’re underground, not a single window, if there’s no power at all how’re we gonna have air? You know?” I pointed up and Daryl looked at the vent on the ceiling.

“No lights, no fridge for the food, no air circulating…” he completed my thought.

“Nope, don’t seem to me like a place we can be for long. ‘S why I told the others to get ready, Jenner’s gonna have to explain what the fuck we’re gonna do if when the guys come back they say there really ain’t no more fuel.”

Just as the last words filled the tense air of the room, the light went off, leaving only a faint emergency glow coming from the corridor, and the silent place became even more silent as the air from the vents stopped flowing. Everybody was out in the corridor at once, asking questions at Jenner, who had just appeared and was walking resolutely along the hallway. In seconds, the whole group was back in the control room, Rick, Shane, Glenn and T-Dog back from the lower levels informing there really wasn’t any more fuel in the barrels. With his already infamous half-words, Jenner explained shallowly that the system of the building made the decisions, not him, and that air and light were not as important as keeping the computers running until the very last second.

“Alright, that’s it!” I raised my voice above all the others. “Back to the rooms now, everybody, grab your things and we’ll get the fuck outta here!”

For one or two seconds, everybody was following my orders, running towards the door, but everyone froze in place again at the loud, deafening alarm sound and blaring red light that took hold of our senses.

“30 minutes to decontamination,” the robotic, cold voice informed.

“Everybody, you heard Sam!” Rick shouted at the top of his lungs, “Let’s get out of here, now!”

A metal door rose from within the ground just as he spoke, closing the only way out of the room. It had looked like there wasn’t any door there at all, but now it seemed like it was a solid, metal wall. Fear on the verge of despair washed the group like an ice-cold waterfall, screaming and cries and Daryl trying to attack the doctor, who now was calmly sitting down on his fancy chair.

“Jenner, open that door now,” Rick tried, sweat rolling down his face.

“There's no point. Everything topside is locked down. The emergency exits are sealed.”

“Well, open the damn things!” Daryl yelled from where he was being held away by Shane.

“That's not something I control. The computers do,” Jenner spoke firmly but still carrying and annoying calm on his words. “I told you once that front door closed, it wouldn't open again. You heard me say that.”

“We heard you say they’d stay closed, not that we’d be locked in even if we wanted out!” I yelled, despising how my voice trembled. “You were not very clear ‘bout that, doc!”

“It's better this way.”

“What is better?” Rick asked. “What happens in 28 minutes?”

He didn’t answer, once again, turning away and trying to type something on his computer. There was yelling once again, the men around Jenner trying to get him to talk clearly for once. He finally did, getting up from his chair and screaming and spitting that the whole place had been designed to protect the public from horrible deceases, to keep viruses, bacteria, and parasite inside and to just destroy everything in case any of it could ever get out. Calming himself down like what he was about to say was the most calming and reassuring thing, he explained how the system did that.

“It sets the air on fire,” he practically smiled. “No pain. An end to sorrow, grief... Regret. Everything.”

“You mean an end to _your_ sorrow,” I shouldered through the men and got closer to Jenner. “You’re sitting there accepting your fate, the end to _your_ grief, but making us stay when we want to go?”

“Open the damn door!”, Daryl yelled from the door, where he’d started kicking it. Shane approached the door with an axe he had found somewhere and they both attacked it, grunting and making sparks come out of the metal.

“You should've left well enough alone. It would've been so much easier,” Jenner said from his chair, watching us like he’d watch a movie. “You know what's out there... A short, brutal life and an agonizing death!”, he tried to convince us. Looking at Andrea, he proceeded. “Your sister, you know what this does. You've seen it,” and he looked back at Rick. “Is that really what you want for your wife and son?

“I don't want this!”

“There is no hope. There never was…”

“There's always hope!” Rick was nearly crying in anger. “Maybe it won't be you, maybe not here, but somebody somewhere –”

“What part of ‘everything is gone’ do you not understand?” Andrea cried from her spot on the floor.

“Listen to your friend. She gets it. This is what takes us down. This is our extinction event,” Jenner said with a final tone, like the end of a discussion.

“This isn't right,” Carol was openly crying with Sofia on her arms. “You can't just keep us here!”

“One tiny moment... a millisecond. No pain,” the doctor carried on.

“What the fuck are you trying to convince us about, doctor?” I spoke again. “You want us to sit and accept the air around us will blow up and we’ll die?”

“Wouldn't it be kinder, more compassionate to just hold your loved ones and wait for the clock to run down?”

“Wanna hear what’d be kinder? Cause I don’t think you know much ‘bout it,” I bent a little to look at him. “Compassionate would be to let us choose our fate for ourselves. Lock people in and tell them they’ll die ain’t compassionate, it ain’t kind!”

“You may not see it, but I know what I’m talking about. There is nothing else out there other than dead people walking and ready to eat your flesh! Nothing!”

“You’re a fuckin’ liar, you know that?” I angrily whispered, but loud enough for everyone around to hear. “You didn’t kill yourself like the others. You stayed and you were still trying, weren’t you? Why is that, huh?”

“I didn’t stay alive because I wanted to!” he stood up making me straighten my back. Jenner pointed at the screen where he’d shown the image of the transforming brain before. “I made a promise... To her. My wife.”

“Test subject 19 was your wife?” Lori asked him.

“She begged me to keep going as long as I could. How could I say no? She was dying. It should've been me on that table. I wouldn't have mattered to anybody. She was a loss to the world. Hell, she ran this place. I just worked here. In our field, she was an Einstein. Me? I'm just... Edwin Jenner. She could've done something about this. Not me.”

I snorted a bitter laugh. “Good. You kept your promise to her right to the end. And then you fucked it all up. Bravo!”

“What is that supposed to mean?” Jenner took a step towards me just as Daryl restarted banging his axe on the door.

“You promised, you stayed, you researched, you did all of that. And then right at the end, in the very last minutes of your fuckin’ miserable life, you go and turn yourself into a fuckin murderer. Poor 19… The poor woman who’ll have a murderer for a husband.”

“Murder? Is that what – That’s not what I’m trying to do here!” he screamed and looked around trying to defend himself. “I’m helping you! You all came to me begging for help, and I’ve given it to you! You’re all going to die out there, a suffering, painful death, I’m being compassionate here –”

“Bullshit!” I yelled at his face. “You’re killing us! You’re lockin’ us in and giving us no choice! This is murder, plain and simple. Our lives are not yours to decide. If we wanna go back out there and die fighting to our last breaths, so we should be able to! These children’s lives are their mothers’ to decide about!” I cried out pointing at the direction where Lori and Carol held their kids. Then I pointed to my own stomach. “This child! My child! This life here is mine and I will fight like hell to save it. If we’re gonna die, we’re gonna die fighting. You don’t make this decision for us!”

Nobody seemed to be breathing now. Daryl’s banging on the door had ceased. Jenner stared down at me, eyes on mine for long seconds. Then he shook his head and walked towards the other side of his desk again.

“I told you topside's locked down. I can't open those,” and with a simple card and password, the metal door loudly slid open.

“Come on!” Daryl shouted from the threshold.

“ _This_ is the right thing to do,” I pointed at him. “Goodbye, doc!”

“Come on, Sam, let’s go!” Daryl called again as everybody else ran towards the exit.

“We have less than four minutes!” Glenn informed as he reached it.

On my way, I grabbed Jackie, who’d been standing motionless on her spot, and dragged the woman with me. On the rise that led to the door, Jackie stopped.

“No, no, I'm staying. I'm staying, sweetie.”

“What?! No, Jackie!”

“No, it's okay, I know. For the first time in a long time, I’m sure about something. I'm not ending up like Jim and Amy.”

“You’re not, Jackie, we’re fighting for –”

“There's no time to argue and no point, not if you want to get out!”

“But Jackie –”

“Just get out, please Sam, you have a baby there! Just please, go!”

“Sam!”, Daryl returned from the hallway where he’d already reached. “Come on, Sam,” he said urgently, though in a muffled voice. “We gotta go now, come on!”

With a last look at Jackie, who nodded and smiled at me, I turned around and let Daryl drag me away.

* * *

Carol had a grenade.

Yep. Carol had a _fucking grenade_.

When the doors upstairs didn’t bolt even at gunshots, she suddenly took a grenade off her pack and handed it to Rick. He placed it by where the glass had been slightly cracked and everybody fell to the floor waiting for the explosion, Daryl right on top of me covering my whole body with his. The whole world shook as the glass broke at the explosion, the group climbing through the hole and out of the condemned building. Walkers outside fell like leaves at our shots, just not as scary as they had been just hours before. With seconds to spare everybody was inside the cars, ready to get out of there even before the explosion. Daryl pushed shoved me in before him into the truck through the driver’s door and just as he closed it we saw Andrea and Dale leaving the building, climbing out and running away, though not fast enough.

“Dale!!” I all but climbed over Daryl to be able to scream through the window. “Andrea! Get cover! It’ll blow – get cover!!”

There was still a moment to see them run and dive behind the sandbags before I was shoved down to the floor of the truck, Daryl over me and the deafening explosion, the heat on our skins threatening to burn everything around, an earthquake destroying anything that was still standing. For minutes we stayed like that, shaking, fearing the cars would not be enough to protect us until it all started to fade, sound slowly lowering, heat cooling down degree by degree, faint cries coming from the other cars slowly reaching my ears.

“It’s over,” Daryl whispered from somewhere above me. “You okay?”

“Yeah! Yeah, you?”

He sat upon the driver’s seat, still bent down to look at me on the floor, curved into a ball. “Fine! Come on, get up,” he reached for my hand and pulled me up. “You fine. It’s okay.”

“Good, good, we’re fine… They’re all fine?”

“All cars whole, Dale and Andrea just entered the RV. Everybody’s fine.”

Being pulled up by Daryl, I didn’t stop moving until I was all but over him, clutching to his shirt and sobbing into his shoulder. I didn’t plan to do it, my body acting on its own volition. I didn’t pay attention to him starting the truck and it moving away from the burning building, my emotions completely out of my control. Daryl didn’t say a word; he held me against him with one arm as he awkwardly drove away following the other cars, only Shane’s jeep behind us.


	19. Day 65, part 2

The radio was silent, and the cars moved slowly down the streets, as if numb. My sobs slowly subsided and I forced myself to breathe, just breathe and gather my control back. I wish I didn’t have to let go, though. It was good there, at Daryl’s chest, his arm around me, hand resting on my back, grounding me. Sniffing and drying my face, I forced myself to let go, returning to my seat, but still closer to him that what was necessary now. I looked down as I tried to clean up my face, embarrassed. This had been the most obvious demonstration of weakness I had ever given in front of Daryl – in front of anyone, for that matter, and it was the second time in two days that I cried in front of him.

“Sorry,” I mumbled after a while, still looking down.

Daryl looked at me sideways for a quick moment and returned his eyes to the road. “You okay?” he asked dismissing my apology.

“I’ll be. I guess.”

“’S alright. You’ve just saved all of our asses, can break down all ya want.”

“Can’t believe that son of a bitch was gonna kill us all!” I finally looked up, eyes red but tears gone.

“Well, motherfucker’s dead now.”

“And so’s Jackie.”

“Her choice. Opted out, ain’t that what Jenner called it?”

I was silent for a long moment thinking about Jackie’s choice and the final, messed up, desperate minutes we had spent inside the CDC. How I had made Jenner open the door and all but told everyone on the group that I was pregnant. It was out now.

“What the fuck?” Daryl mumbled taking me out of my thoughts.

“What?”

“Look at that,” he pointed somewhere out of the truck, on the pavement. We were on a central Atlanta street, a few walkers bundled together by a wall on the sidewalk. “See that?”

“Holy. Fuck!” I’d seen it too. Nearly in the middle of the street, a black duffel bag lay, the long tip of a rifle coming out of it. “Stop the car!” I told Daryl as I reached for the radio that had been sitting forgotten by my side on the seat.

“Hey, why are you stopping?” Rick’s voice came from it before I could press the button.

“You don’t see it?” I asked him. “To our right, thirty feet away?”

He took a few seconds to answer. “Yep. I’ll be damned, looks like the guns we gave the group from the elderly home.”

“Wonder why they’re here,” I said thought the radio. “Gotta get’em back though,”

“Sure thing,” he agreed through the radio.

By my side, Daryl said, “Group of walkers there, gotta get it fast.”

“I’m fast enough,” I told him and pressed the radio button before Daryl could say anything. “I’ll go and get it,” I told the others among radio static. “You all just gotta honk like hell to attract the walkers away.”

“The hell you gonna go!” Daryl roared at me at the same time the radio came to life in my hand.

“We’re gonna get the bag back alright,” Rick told me, “but one of us is going out there, not you, Sam. Not in your condition, now that we know about it. Shane says he’ll go.”

I pressed the button immediately, glaring at Daryl who seemed to get angrier at me by the second, “I’m fast, Rick, it’s what we need now. Shane, I know you’re strong and capable,” I rolled my eyes, “but what we need now is speed. I go out, get it and run back, it’s all. So I’m going, or maybe Glenn.”

The radio was silent for a few seconds before Rick spoke again. “Don’t move, Sam. Just give us a minute.”

Growling, I let the radio fall back between Daryl and I. The small group of walkers from the sidewalk seemed to have noticed something had approached, but they were still uncertain, a few of them turning around to sniff the air. Two of three were already on the street, closer to the bag.

“That’s exactly why I waited as long as I could to tell people about the baby. I knew it was gonna be like this,” I hissed, elbow on the window frame, head resting on my hand.

“What, you knew people were gonna be worried ‘about your safety and the kid’s?” Daryl snarled in a low voice. “Yeah, kinda sucks having people care ‘about ya.”

“You know what I mean, Daryl!”

“I know you’re bitchin’ for no reason. Ya gonna need to slow down soon, so just get the fuck over it.”

I stared at him, mouth hanging a bit, for a few seconds. “Soon,” I finally spoke, “is not now.”

With that, I grabbed the axe from the floor of the truck and pushed the handle to open the door, quickly sliding out of it.

“The fuck, Sam?” Daryl yelled from inside.

“You cross the street and attract them in that direction. I’ll get the bag and come back before they reach you. Go!”

Knowing Daryl would make me stop if I gave him the chance, I moved, but still in time to listen to him cursing at me and getting out of the truck. Not looking back, certain that Daryl would be doing as I’d told him, I walked fast, rolling the axe handle on my right hand. Walking in a straight line I met the first walker before it could even groan at me, axe blade perforating its skull and brain easily. As it fell, I planted my foot on the head and pulled the axe out, twisting around myself and swinging it immediately onto the second one. Somewhere behind me, I heard loud bangs of a palm against a car, followed by Daryl’s voice yelling incoherent words to attract the walkers. I was already by the bag on the asphalt when I had to get rid of the third walker, a fourth one aiming at me instead of following the others towards Daryl. I looked around for a moment; five or six walkers were getting close to where he was still banging at the car; I could see him stretch his neck to try and see me from the top of their rotting heads. Looking back at my goal, I took the last few steps in a sprint, bending quickly to grab the bag’s handle. It was heavier than I had thought, but it didn’t stop me from throwing it over my shoulder and turning around to get out of there. Behind me, a loud growl sounded closer than it should. Aiming only with the corner of my eyes, I side kicked the too quick female walker, hitting her on the chest and making her fall back, growling angrily. My axe fell to the ground then, and the bag slipped from my shoulder.

“Sam!” Darryl yelled from a few feet away as he ran back to the truck before the walkers got to him. “Look out, they’re comin’!”

Looking to where he pointed, I saw another group of dead going in my direction. Cursing aloud, I knew I had to run immediately, so I hugged the heavy bag against my chest and fled, the worn-out red axe abandoned on the asphalt. Before I could even close the door and settle on the truck, Daryl was already charging away, yelling and scolding. The door closed on its own with the truck’s movement and the other cars in the caravan followed us away, leaving the dead herd behind, hungry and growling.

* * *

I completely ignored the radio from then on. Daryl had already given up yelling at me for my imprudence, now he was just breathing hard, his face angry, but silent. He was a rude man, that was for certain, but I knew he cared and he had only gotten that angry because I had been at risk. He cared, and I just wished he would yell a little less, but then again, he’d been scared for me. Because he cared. I just wondered if he cared in the same way I was beginning to care for him. You know, the same _way_.

When I finished the discussion by saying now we had more guns and were safer than ever, he knew it was impossible to convince me of how reckless he thought I had bee. I didn’t think I was, I was fast and I defended myself and I got the weapons while the others were still sitting their asses on the cars discussing it. On the radio, Rick had said the same but soon had stopped. It was all quiet for a while, long minutes when nobody really knew where we were going.

“Wait, hold on a minute,” I broke the silence making Daryl glance at me and quickly looking away. “Didn’t you say ya gave the weapons to the elderly home group?”

Daryl took a couple of seconds but mumbled “Fuck” under his breath just as the radio came to life on the seat between us, with Rick questioning the exact same thing.

Minutes later, the caravan was slowly approaching and carefully stopping by the brick wall of the home. The street seemed to be empty, but there was a square across the street with trees that could hide walkers. The brick wall had a hole in it, which Daryl quickly told me had already been there before.

As the group hopped off the cars, the silence around was eerie, the energies tense as we looked around and men instinctively got guarding positions, even if they kept looking over their shoulders to watch, as every other pair of eyes did, as I met Rick and Shane on the sidewalk and handed Rick the heavy bag I’d been carrying against my chest. As he held it by the strap, letting I hang heavily by his side, Rick put a hand on my shoulder, leaning in a bit to say “You okay?”

“Yeah,” I answered instinctively, subtly shaking his hand off with a shrug. “I’m good. You all?”, I looked briefly at Shane and pointed at Lori, where she stood with Carl near Carol and Sophia.

“Man, I gotta tell ya, that was some crazy shit right there,” Shane shook his head, an overwhelmed laugh on his voice

“You got Jenner to open the doors. That was –” Rick paused also shaking his head. “We owe you big, Sam.”

“No, come on,” I frowned crossing my arms. “You don’t have to thank me for that, that’s my job, is all. And I was saving my own ass too, and my –” I paused then and looked down at myself. Looking up again I saw a little understanding smile coming from Rick, “Why you not saying this to Carol? She’s the one who had a damn grenade!”

With that, I excused myself and moved away from them, making a straight line towards Carol, who saw me approaching with quick steps. Unceremoniously, I grabbed Carol by the shoulders and pulled, arms coming around her in a tight hug.

"Sam?" Carol asked in a weak voice, uncertain but accepting the hug, her own hands patting my back.

"You're amazing, d'you know that?" I asked pulling away, hands once again on her shoulders. "You had a fuckin' grenade!"

"W-Wel, it was actually Rick's, I'd – I just found it in his pocket –"

"Yeah, but he didn't even remember it then. We'd all have died there."

"Well, yeah –"

"Thank you."

Carol was stunned but smiled after a second, nodding, uncertain of what to do with this gratitude.

"I'll just –" I said suddenly and left in quick steps, but could still see from the corner of my eye when others thanked Carol as well, incentivized by my action.

I crossed the street then, all but running, and curved herself over the curb to throw up all the feelings and terrifying emotions I'd been having since that damned control room. As I heaved, even without seeing it, I felt Daryl approaching silently to guard my back, but it was the other women, Carol, Lori, Andrea, who ran to help. One of them pulled my dreads up and held them, someone was rubbing my back in soothing circles.

I had been thought this uncountable times before, always alone, hiding it in the woods, never wanting to concern or alert anyone of my condition, and always thought it was fine. I could handle it. But now, having their quiet support and Daryl's solid presence right there, I felt, at least for a moment, safer than I had felt in months.

***

The patio was filled with walkers and everybody knew this didn't mean anything good for the elderly home. Rick was the first to shoot, right after a clear, loud "Fuck it!". Everybody who was carrying guns started shooting after he did, the walkers falling to the ground one by one. It was over in seconds, and for a moment all that could be heard was the children's cries and their mothers gently shushing them, crouched on the floor, terrified. We moved to the entrance then, a metal door that led to a large room filled with tossed around furniture, but otherwise empty. At the end of the room, double wooden doors lead to a long, dim corridor.

I entered with my .12 gunshot ready, right behind Daryl with his crossbow, just as attentive. There were no walking dead, just normal ones, a women’s legs outside of a door, some other one right ahead, a loud buzz of flies around the bodies and the solid smell. The ones in the front – Glenn, Rick, Shane, Daryl and myself – made no sound, on guard, starting to look around and into doors, but loud gasps and cries from behind us filled the empty space as if the sight of dead people was scarier than seeing them walk and growl. Sophia was crying out loudly, Daryl turned around, lowering the crossbow just enough, whispering angrily for her to shut up. The fear from the two mothers immediately transformed into hatred for him man chastising the girl.

“Shut it, all of you!” I also whispered-screamed and motioned Daryl to move on with our swipe.

More walkers were approaching as we entered, attracted by the loud gunshots from before and the cries now, the last ones of the group closing the doors a second before the first walker bumped into it. The locks were broken and they had to rest their full body weight to hold it in place. I didn’t see more now, moving with the men to check the entire space. Many people were dead all around, inside rooms, on the corridor, in another big room and also upstairs. They were all dead for good, though, clear gunshots on their heads.

In a few minutes we had all joined again in one of the largest rooms, little less afraid now we knew there were no walkers inside. Rick was speaking, clearly trying to sound calm and confident.

“Upstairs is our best bet. We've cleared a few rooms, can barricade those if we have to,” he paused and looks around at the people, nodding in what he thought to be a reassuring way. “We'll be alright.”

“You mean it this time?” Carol asked from where she sat once again with her arms around her daughter. She was almost crying. “Or are you lying to us like all the times before?”

“That's unfair,” Lori defended her husband. “And no help at all.”

“He wasn’t lying, Carol,” I told her from close to the doorway. “He was just wrong. How could anybody know this would happen?”

“But what the hell happened?” Glenn voiced it, trepidation all over his voice.

“What do you think?” Andrea was the one to answer. “They got overrun.”

A loud snort came out of Daryl as he paced around looking from body to body and Andrea looked at him affronted.

“Something to say?”

“Yeah!”, he didn’t even let her finish her question. “How about 'observant'?”

“Observant? Big word for a guy like you. Three whole syllables!”

By the door I felt like puffing my chest out and walking over the blonde woman, but restrained, questioning myself for being so protective over Daryl. Nobody should talk to him like that, he was not stupid like people seem to think he was. Fucking prejudiced people. Daryl had been crucial to the survival of this group all along and still, all this woman could see was his redneck label. But Daryl was a big boy and could defend himself, so I didn’t move.

“Walkers didn’t do this!” he started explaining angrily. “Geeks didn’t show up ‘til all this went down. Somebody attacked this place, killed these people, took whatever they wanted. They're all shot in the head, execution-style!”

Yep, as I said, he could clearly defend himself. Without controlling it, I had a proud smirk on my face. He’d been voicing what I’d noticed since we’d walked in this godforsaken place. Andrea had lost her know-it-all expression and was looking at the gunshots, face fallen.

“Ya’ll worried about walkers? I'd be much more worried about the people who came and did all this,” then he approached Andrea again. “Get a dictionary, look it up,” and he pointed at his own head. “Observant”.

He crossed the room then, approaching me by the door on his way out. I looked proudly at him, still smirking, an eyebrow shooting up. His expression didn’t change much, he was irritated and worried, but the corner of his lip did twitch a bit at my look. It was enough for me. He passed me and left the room, clearly looking to be alone or on the lookout.

People were sitting close together later on, spirits subdued, when Rick and Shane returned from the kitchens where they went looking for food. They found one single can of corn and Shane had potato chips and one single bottle of water, and that was all. They shared it among us all, including a bottle of whiskey Shane also had brought from the CDC. Daryl asked him to share it and I just looked away. It wasn’t because I would die for a swig or two and couldn’t that Daryl shouldn’t enjoy a little of the numbness he could get from it.

“What’s next?” Lori asked as she got up to join her husband by the window.

Rick didn’t answer, he just turned around and shared a long look with me. I held his eyes for a moment before nodding in Shane’s direction. He’d been mentioning Fort Benning for a while and Rick and I hadn’t heard him, we had chosen the CDC. Maybe it was time to give the man’s idea a try. Rick looked at Shane, who was already nodding his head and looking at me as he mumbled “Fort Benning.”

“We should’ve listened to you, Shane”, Rick told him. “Would have saved us a lot of grief ahead.”

“We couldn’t have known what would happen,” I said from where I sat next to Daryl. “The CDC was closer; we didn’t have enough gas to go all the way down to Alabama – we still don’t have it. We had to try it.”

“Yeah, but…” Rick shook his head. “Jackie would still be alive…”

“Was her choice, man. Do not take that on,” Shane told his friend.

“All these people…” Glenn entered the conversation. “Who’d have done something like this? Just… Come in here and murder everybody, even all the old people, how sick is that?”

Sophia flinched and nearly cried just to hear him say this and Carol hugged her. Lori moved to Carl, who also had gone pale, mumbling “Is this something we need to be discussing right now?”

“Uh, yeah. It actually is. I mean…” I got up from my spot and looked down at Carol and Lori. “I'd like a word with you two if it's fine? Just us?"

The two other women nodded confused and got up, reassuring their kids they’d be back soon and that everything was ok, and we retread from the children and the men, going to stand at a corner.

"Look, I know things got a bit heated when we entered the home?" I started.

"We’re all on the edge," Lori told me, crossing her arms. "What we found here was far from what we were expecting, again."

"First the CDC, now this..." Carol said. "It's like one blow after the other."

"Yeah, but no matter what happened,” Lori crossed her arms and spoke firmly. “I will not let anybody talk to my child like that, or even talk about these things around him. I will always defend him, I'm sure Carol will too."

I took a deep breath and rested my hands on my hips, "Look, Daryl’s a brute, we all agree to that, but he means well. He told them to shut up and you're angry about that, fine. But at that moment, they actually _had to shut up_ ," Carol frowned at that and Lori took a breath to speak, her arms uncrossing and hands imitating my position, but I moved on. "I mean it, Lori. We all know silence‘s crucial when there’re walkers around, we taught you that ages ago at the quarry. We weren’t just saying, they are attracted by sound, ya’ll know that. They had to be quiet just like all of us did. You're so mad about someone calling out on your children that you can't even see he was right."

"I know we need silence, but I'm the one who's gonna tell my son to be quiet!", Lori rebated.

"But you didn’t! Lori, you were holding your son and he was being loud, you were not telling him to be quiet, same thing for you Carol. Sophia was crying and even you was whimpering, and not quietly!" I opened my arms, "Somebody had to! I mean it, if Daryl hadn’t said it, I would’ve and you’d be all mad at me instead of him”.

“There are ways to speak –”

"Look, Lori, Carol, I've been meaning to talk to you about this. We all know they're scared, more scared than all of the adults, it must be terrifying for them. But it will be even more terrifying if they find themselves in a dangerous situation without being prepared to react, to protect themselves.”

“I’ll protect him! And Rick will –”

“You don't know you're always going to be there to protect them, every time. They need to know how to avoid the dead, how to not attract’em, how to fight’em if it gets to that. We’re all always going to protect them, but we'll never know what will happen. They need ‘t stop acting so scared and helpless, for their own safety."

“And what do you suggest?” Carol tried but her voice still shuddered. “Arming the children? Giving them guns and crossbows?”

“Something like that, yeah,” I said firmly and saw their affronted expressions. And I could understand the idea as preposterous, but, well. “I don’t mean just give it to them and leave them to do whatever, I mean teach them. I mean reassuring them that they don’t have to be scared if they know how to react. And you two, too, I saw how scared you got out there, you need to… Come on, I don’t know, be braver? The world is not gonna go back to what it was, you heard Jenner, it’s all gone. We need to survive, we need to make sure the children survive, that _my baby_ does, we need all to be strong as a group, not just count on a few of the stronger ones to defend everybody.”

There was a moment of silence. I felt suddenly exhausted and breathed out hard and I looked down, a hand pressing the bridge of my nose.

“How are you not scared?” Carol’s small voice asked me, a bit more gently than her expression was before.

I looked up at her, at Lori and then back. “You think I ain’t scared?” I snorted a fake laugh, trying a smile. “I’m a pregnant girl during the fuckin’ walking dead apocalypse. I’m fuckin’ terrified!” Lori and Carol exchanged an uncomfortable look, not knowing what to say. I didn’t know anymore, either. “We should get some rest. Just, please, think about it? We can’t have them getting terrified by the simple mention of murder. I told you once, Carol, that I could teach you and Sophia how to defend yourselves? Offer still stands.”

I turned my back on them then and left following the men who were leaving the room. Daryl waited for me, letting me pass first.

“We’re all rattled and exhausted, no one’s thinking clearly,” Rick was saying when I arrived, “But we have to start. Our lives depend on it.”

“You’re damn right,” Shane agreed once again shaking his head. “We can’t let our guard down again,” and as Daryl and I joined, we walked towards the stairwell where we found Dale and T-dog already sitting down. “Back at camp, having us some fish fried and no one on watch, and people died when they didn’t need to.”

“Hey,” I patted Glenn’s arm to stop him before we joined, and spoke in a low voice. “You did nothing wrong by talking about what happened here. It’s the reality and they need to start being able to handle it”.

After we all got together and crouched down to talk, Rick started, “Fort Benning, that’s the consensus.”

“When we’re leaving here?” T asked accepting the bottle Daryl handed him across the group.

“At first light”, I told them making the others nod. “I just worry about the fuel; we’ll have to get it from any car we can find on the way. And we’re wasting fuel driving so many vehicles, we need to lose a few. We’ll use the gas from whatever cars we leave behind, pro’ly be enough to leave the city. We,” and I pointed between Daryl and me, "can keep the bike and lose the truck, it spends less gas,” and I looked at Daryl to see him nodding his agreement.

“That’d be a start,” said Shane. “Let’s just try to get a little shut-eye tonight, ok? T, you get the first hour?”

* * *

I looked around for Daryl from where I had laid down on the hard floor against a wall. I thought he’d come to rest a bit at any moment, but as the minutes passed by and he didn’t, I started to worry. I knew he was not much of a sleeper, but he had to rest. There was a journey ahead of us, over one hundred miles separated us from Fort Benning, and there was no telling what we’d find on the way there or if we’d ever even make it.

Silently, I got up from my spot, navigating through my group companions’ sleeping forms, and headed to the hallway, looking around for him. He was a few feet away along the corridor, lying down on the floor just as I had been, one arm thrown over his eyes. Relieved that he seemed to be asleep, I approached quietly even with my boots still on my feet – you just don’t sleep without shoes on in this new world – and sat down against the wall, close to his head. I had lost sleep now anyway.

“You gotta sleep,” he told me in a real low voice, without having moved an inch.

“Can’t… Though you was sleeping,” I whispered, elbows resting on my knees.

“Can’t either,” and he still didn’t move.

We went silent. I closed my eyes and let my head fall back against the hard surface of the white wall. Daryl moved the arm covering his eyes to pillow his head, now just a breath away from my leg.

As he settled, I whispered, “You were great today, ya know that?” I opened my eyes then, straightening my head again and looking down on him. He said nothing but looked up at me, a question in his eyes. “Struggled together with everyone… Gave me your shoulder to cry and snot all over you…” I smiled then, a laugh in her voice. He did too, a corner of his lips moving up. “Helped secure this place and _then_!” I made a pause “shut Andrea up in front of everybody and it was _aaaawesome!_ ”

He laughed quietly, moving his eyes away from me. We were both strangely smiling now, among all the shit that had been going on.

“They underestimate you,” I said after a while.

“An’ you don’t?” he spoke quietly again, his voice more like a rumble.

“Guess I did… Once. In the other life. I don’ anymore.”

“Don’t know what ya thing I can do.”

“Well, for one, you’re ‘observant’,” I said smiling one more time, and he looked up at me again, the shy smile returning. “I mean, you really are, you’re the only one who noticed me being all pregnant. And the hunting and tracking go without saying… You don’t freeze out with danger, you’re logical. You’re more important to this group than you imagine.” _And to me_ , but I didn’t say it. “They’ll see it soon enough as well, you’ll see.”

“Don’t care wha’ they think”.

“I know.”

“’S long as –” he started and stopped himself real quickly. I looked down at him again.

“What?”

“‘S nothin’.”

“No, as long as what?”

He removed his arm from under his head and covered his eyes once again. “Go to sleep.”

“Daryl?” I asked as I turned to my side and looked straight down at him, my head lined with his from above.

“What?”

“As long as what?”

He lifted his arm to look up at the ceiling and saw my face right there, humor in my eyes. He stopped what he was going to say, stunned by the position we found ourselves in and took a moment to regain his wits.

“Only reason I’m in this group is ‘cause of you,” he started with a sincerity that stunned me. “Was it Merle and me, I’d be gone straight away from that fuckin’ roof. So _as long as_ you don’t think I’m a piece of shit, I’m good.” And as I was just too stunned to move or say anything, he threw the arm over his eye again. “Now jus’ _please_ go to sleep and leave me alone.”

“Alright…,” I whispered, moving again. I quickly settled on the floor, against the same wall, my head close to his. “Good night, Daryl.”

He only grumbled in response. I knew it was enough of talking for him for a day. I was still smiling, butterflies inside my stomach, when I fell asleep.


	20. Day 66

My stomach was growling when Daryl and I stored the last of our few bags on Dale’s RV but I forced myself to ignore it, sure that everybody else were just as hungry. The truck where I’d been traveling since the beginning with Merle and Daryl was about to be left behind, just as T-Dog’s van and Shane’s Jeep, and Daryl and I would be hitting the road on the bike. I confess I got a bit emotional over the old truck Daryl has stolen from Mr. Walker, but just for a moment.

I took a couple more minutes to check if everybody was fine before moving to where Daryl was waiting for me, leaning against the bike.

“All set?” he asked with his head low but looking at me, trying to protect his eyes from the sunrise, a cigarette between his fingers.

“All good,” I stopped close to him. “Full tank?”

He hummed confirming and took a last pull of the cigarette before throwing it far on the street.

“God, I’m dying for a smoke…”

“Yeah, well,” Daryl said as he got up and turned to the bike, throwing one leg over it. “Ya ain’t havin’ it.”

I just groaned in response and waited for Daryl to get set. The RV and Rick’s car were already starting and he nodded to let me know I could join him. I settled awkwardly, the straps of the seat bag under me making it a bit uncomfortable, but the most uncomfortable part was not knowing what to do with my hands. Should I hold on to the bike seat? To Daryl’s shoulder, to his waist? He told me to hold on and I instinctively went to the last option, my hands holding on just enough to be safe rather than grabbing him as I’d like. He took off in front of the cars and they followed suit as Daryl made distance between us and the nursing home, the CDC and slowly away from the city.

“What’s up with the vest?” I asked as I leaned a bit closer to his ear.

Almost imperceptibly, Daryl flinched. It was for just a millisecond, and just slightly, but I caught it because I was touching him. He turned his head to me as he did, looking at me briefly from the corner of his eye, before turning again to look at the road.

“Found in the seat bag. Was Merle’s.”

“Oh…” I was quiet for a moment thinking of Daryl having inherited Merle’s things even though he was supposedly not dead. I’d never seen Merle use it, so thankfully I wouldn’t connect the vest to Merle. And again, _damn_. “Looks cool,” I told him, choosing ‘cool’ over ‘hot’.

He turned slightly to me again, “Yeah?”

“Yeah. Badass!”

He smiled a bit, just slightly, and looked back to the road. It was mainly empty and silent. It felt like it had been hours and we didn’t talk, just us and the deep roar of the motor and the sound of the cars behind us. I stretched her back, testing my balance on the bike, and Daryl looked at me sideways quickly and said something.

“What?” I asked aloud.

“Sore already?” he shouted.

“My back, a bit. Just adjusting. I’ll get used to it!” He just nodded at it. “How are your arms not tired?”

“What?” was his turn not ho hear me.

I relaxed my back, curving it a bit to get closer to his ear. “Your arms in this position, not tired?”

“Burnin’ like hell!” he nodded with a smirk.

I laughed at that and saw him smile more at it, eyes squinting against the wind. My discomfort seemed to vanish then. My arms went around him a little further, still not hugging completely by I rested my hands nearly on his stomach rather than on his waist. I decidedly liked riding with Daryl. We went quiet for a few more minutes then, but it was comfortable, companionable. I dared to raise my head up to the sky and close my eyes for a moment, feeling the warmth and the wind and allowing myself a moment of peace.

“Hey!”, Daryl called my attention, I opened my eyes to look at the back of his head.

“Yeah?”

“If there’s no Fort Benning?”

That was one damned important question that nobody had voiced yet. I hoped the others were feeling positive about it, because we all could use moments of positivity. I was on the realistic side, though. Just as I had felt about Atlanta before – we had to try it and make sure, but never really believed there was shelter – I felt about Fort Benning.

“If there’s nothing there,” I told Daryl, close to his ear. “We gonna have to stop relying on others to make do. Gonna stop going from a place to another looking for help. We’ll be done with it.”

“Make it happen ourselves?” he asked me.

“Yeah. Find a safe place.”

“Well, goes without saying…”

“I mean, find a place with walls, secure it, settle up. Staying on the road as we been won’t do. And settling camp in the open like the quarry won’t neither.”

“What you picture? A buildin’ or some?”

“Yeah, a condo, hotel, one of those fancy gated communities, anything that can be closed all around would do.”

“Maybe some land space to grow stuff,” he completed the thought.

“Yes!” I got excited and slapped his stomach a bit, more like poking him. “Grow food! ‘Cause canned and dehydrated food won’t last too long around. Maybe even animals! It’s what I mean, a place we can make life move on, you know?”

He was quiet for a moment and I let him think because my mind as also wondering far. He finally spoke again, “It’s a nice thought.”

“Ain’t it? There’s still so much we can do. It’s actually not the fuckin’ apocalypse. We’re still here after all!”

“Hey, look,” Daryl’s pointed ahead, the conversation dying then. “Road’s blocked.”

“Fuck… Things can never be too calm.”

We approached the last of the cars of what seemed to be an enormous traffic jam and Daryl slowed down. There were cars on the road and on the grassy area between the lanes, opened doors and no sign of life around. Daryl navigated through them carefully for a bit until I asked him to turn back to the cars. When we did, we found the RV and Rick’s car already stopped, waiting for us.

“You see a way through?” Dale asked us over the noise of the bike.

Daryl nodded as I answered, “Yeah, gotta go slow but I think we can pass.”

He rounded the RV with the bike. When passing between it and the car, we looked at Rick and I nodded, informing him they could go through. Slowly we crisscrossed among the cars, dead people inside, nothing moving.

“Lots a’ things here,” Daryl broke the silence. “Should scavenge a bit.”

“Yeah, can’t let all this gas go to waste,” I agreed as I twisted around to look at Dale on the RV and tell them we were stopping but was instead met by his engine popping and smoke coming out of his hood. Daryl flinched at the sound, turning his head to look as well, alarmed, and stopped the bike.

“I said it! Didn’t I say it?” Dale was mumbling when everybody got out of the vehicles to gather by the hood. “A thousand times. Dead in the water.”

“Problem, Dale?” Rick asked the obvious.

Nodding at me in agreement, Daryl walked away from the bike and immediately started looking at stuff in an open car.

“Just a small matter of being stuck in the middle of nowhere with no hope of –” Dale paused to look at what Daryl was doing. “Okay, that was dumb.”

“Can’t find a radiator hose here?” Shane tried to joke but wasn’t smiling.

“A whole bunch o’stuff we can find,” Daryl grumbled from his position.

“I can siphon more fuel from these cars, for a start,” T-Dog was saying even as he already made his way through the cars.

“Maybe some water?” Carol said hopefully

“Food?” Glenn completed.

“This is a graveyard!” Lori said looking around with wide eyes, making everyone look at her. “I don’t know how I feel about this.”

“Well, I know damn well what I feel ‘bout this,” I said as I moved stuff on the same car Daryl was at and lifted one bottle of water in each hand to show everyone. “I feel like we have water!” I stepped towards Carol and gave her one of the bottles. “Everybody spread around and take a look, anything you think can be useful will probably be. Let’s gather stuff ‘round here and store them later. And watch out for walkers, could be some hidden ‘round here, you never know.”

Silently and quite a bit solemnly, people spread around. Daryl rushed to join T-Dog with the siphoning and I wandered. I found a bag full of some summer clothes that would not do any of us good these days and emptied it in order to fill it up with useful things. With it hanging from my shoulders, I grabbed anything eatable I put my eyes on – a can of Dr. Pepper, a bag of family size chips, crackers, another bottle of water, mints and, strangely, a catchup bottle – when I heard Shane celebrating somewhere behind me. Looking back, I saw he’d found water – lots of it – and was pouring some over his head, “It’s like being baptized, man!”

I smiled and kept moving. In a red car by my side, I saw a baby chair strapped to the back car seat and stopped to stare for a moment. The chair was thankfully empty, but I opened the door anyway. If there had been a baby in that car, there might also be baby stuff. Careful to check if the car was really empty, I scavenged through it and found a can of formula, a baby bottle and one small bag with baby clothes in it. Heart clenching at the thought of what might have happened to that specific baby, I dropped the entire content into the bag, the thought giving me a momentary stop as it always did. It still felt surreal that I was pregnant. I mean, I, _Sam Danes_ , was pregnant.

“Sam!”

It was not simply Daryl calling me. It was him calling at an urgent whisper that alerted me something was wrong. Still sitting on the back seat of the car, I looked through the open door to see him crouching by one of the cars, crossbow in hand, a hand against his lips to tell me to be silent and then pointing down the road. I looked but the many cars on the way blocked my view, but I didn’t have to see the walkers to know they were there. I frantically gestured Daryl to come to me and enter the car where we could hide, but he gestured back that he’d be fine and I should close the door.

“Fuck, Daryl!”, I shout-whispered and grabbed the door to close it, but still whispering mouthed “Don’t die!” to him before pulling it quietly closed. I crouched on the floor of the car, making myself as small as possible, and barely dared to breathe.

The stench preceded them, the loud sound of their feet dragging and their low moans and groans following their procession. Long minutes passed and it seemed to never end. It was a large herd like none of us had ever seen before. They were apparently marching together, close to their own in search of food. And that was not good, that was no good at all. If they all started acting like this, it would most definitely complicate life a lot.

Once nothing could be heard again, I dared to stretch my neck and look outside. It seemed to be clear. I carefully got up from the floor and pushed the door open, sliding out slowly.

“Daryl?” I whispered again.

“Here!” he said nearly in a normal voice and I followed it to find him helping T-Dog up from the asphalt. My eyes instantly found his right forearm bleeding quite a lot, and his face was pale and sweaty.

“You bit?!” I asked as I knelt by him, Daryl standing next to us.

“No…” T-Dog said in a weak voice.

“Cut his arm wherever,” Daryl explained. “Was no walker. Come on,” he extended a hand for T to take. “Gotta go back to the group ‘n patch you up.”

As T-Dog stumbled to his feet, Daryl threw his unhurt arm around his shoulder and helped him walk back to the group, a little back on the road. We found most of the group together near the guardrail, looking out at the woods. Strangely, and what struck me the most, Shane was holding Carol in his arms.

My wrist ached.

“What happened?” I asked urgently, dropping the bag I’d been carrying.

“Man, are you okay?” Glenn asked as he approached us, eyeing T and his bloody arms. Dale also joined them, taking T from Daryl and helping him sit on the asphalt with his back against the car. As T explained what happened, Daryl and I approached the others.

“What is it, what happened?” I asked again, urgently. Carol let go of Shane and tuned to us, and now we could see she was crying, desperation clear in her face as she took a few unsteady steps towards me. “Oh, fuck, Carol, where’s Sophia?”

“She ran from the walkers and entered the woods and Rick went after her, she’s in the woods!” Carol cried without breathing.

“Carol, what? Rick went after her?” I asked looking past Carol to see Shane nodding.

“He was right behind her, he’ll bring her back anytime now.”

“Hey, it’s okay, she’s not alone, Rick’s there to help,” I tried but Carol kept on crying, although she nodded, and turned again to look at the line of trees.

“Why nobody keepin’ watch?” Daryl’s voice came from behind me. “Those were pro’ly not the only fuckin’ walkers in this road, ya know,” and at that, he hopped up the hood of the nearest car, his crossbow in hand, and looked back and forth to check. Without a word, Shane did the same in another car.

The group went silent then, Glenn and Dale, now joined by Andrea – who I noticed, had her face smeared in blood – were helping T with his cut arm. The time passed for what it felt like hours, the heavy silence weighing on our shoulders as we just waited. The sun was scalding hot, burning our skins, bottles of lukewarm water being passed around, and we just waited.

The trees shuffled and dead leaves crunched announcing someone was there. In a moment Rick appeared, stumbling, bloody and sweaty, desperation clear in his features. Shane dropped from the roof of the car and the whole group gathered by the guardrail as Carol looked around frantically, looking for Sophia. She wasn’t there, it was just Rick. I instantly knew, and so did Carol because she was already crying when Rick asked even as he tried to catch his breath, “Where’s Sophia?”, and realization fell upon him as well. “She’s not back?” Carol sobbed and curved on the ground, a kind of pain nobody there knew, and Lori and Andrea went to hold her instantly.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” I was mumbling under my breath as I walked resolutely to Rick, Shane close behind just as Daryl hopped from the car and joined us. “What the fuck happened, Rick?”

“There were two of them, I didn’t have a weapon, I had to attract them away from her. I told her to stay put – there’s a bank by the river, a hole, it was safe, she was supposed to stay there or come right back to the road! I got the walkers and went back, I went right back there and she wasn’t there, I thought she’d headed back here, she’s really not here?”

“No, buddy,” Shane told him in a grave voice. “We’ve been waiting for you to bring her back.”

“We gotta go back there and find her,” I said as I turned to Daryl who was slightly behind me.

“I’ll track her, but gotta go now or we’ll lose light”, he said already moving, knowing exactly what I was going to ask him. The three of us hopped over the guardrail to join Rick, who was already turning to Carol again, a deep breath to start speaking to her, but I held his arm strongly, making him stop.

“Don’t. Promise,” I whispered. “Don’t promise we’ll find her and bring her back safe.”

“I am not leaving her there!” Rick also whispered, angrily as if offended, affronted by what I said, taking even one more step closer.

“Obviously,” I said firmly. “But all you can promise her is that we’ll do our best. That you won’t give up. That you’ll do everything you can to bring her back. That you will put your own life at stake to save that scared little girl. That will have to be all because the fact is that we don’t know. We know all that’s out there. Don’t promise her girl will be fine when you don’t know you’ll be able to fulfil it.”

His face demonstrating a riot of feelings, desperation, anger, realization, Rick turned from me and told Carol simply that they were all going back there to look for her, and with a last glance at Lori, turned and marched away along with me, back to the woods where Daryl was already impatiently waiting. Right behind us, Glenn also joined without a word, clutching his rifle.

Rick practically ran through the woods, guiding us all, desperation coming out of his pores and quickly found the spot by a creek. He showed us where he’d left her, described exactly what had happened and Daryl started tracking immediately, no hesitation. He instantly took the lead of the group – this was his territory and his specialty, Rick close to him, Glenn, Shane and I staying a bit behind. After Daryl defined where Sophia had gotten away from the right track, we decided Daryl and Rick would continue alone, it’s was better to track with fewer people.

“Why you’re back?” was the first thing we heard when crossing the line of trees. “Where is she?” and Carol started crying again, but it wasn’t clear if she had ever stopped.

“Easier to track with fewer people,” Shane explained as he skipped over the guardrail.

“We were just standing on their way,” I said as I did the same and was approached by a weeping Carol. “Daryl and Rick are still there and Daryl found her trail,” I placed both my hands on Carol’s shoulders. Carol’s eye filled with desperate hope at that. “Says she was on her way back here and for some reason went on a different way, but they’re tracking her.” Carol nodded mutely, lips tightly pressed. “Ok, now, you should sit a bit, have some water?”

“I’m not leaving, I’m staying right here,” the wet eyes woman said firmly.

“’Kay… I get it,” and with that I looked around to where I saw Shane organizing the others to start working on something. I excused myself and moved to him, a hand covering my eyes over the lowering sun, “Hey, you moving cars?”

“Huh, yeah. Figured we should clear the road so we can go through later.”

“Good, and gets people busy. But we ain’t going anywhere without Sophia, you surely know.”

“’Course not.”

“I gotta ask you something else, could you get a car seat as you did back at camp so we can set it for Carol?” I asked and Shane looked over my shoulder to the woman, standing there with her arms crossed. “Ain’t no way she’s leaving that spot and last thing we need now is anyone passing out from exhaustion…”

***

I agreed with Shane when he decided Andrea should not have her gun back, not that I would ever say it. Making decisions about security and weapons was Shane’s responsibility after all, and as long as people were not trained to really use the guns, they could mean more trouble. This training, not only with guns but with any other sort of weapons should happen soon, I knew it. What was happening to Sophia was the best proof of that. Nobody at this group was safe and this had to change. The herd that had passed was a terrible sign for us who were prepared, even more for them who weren’t.

The dusk sun was nearly gone, day rapidly turning into evening and there was still no sign from Rick and Daryl. I knew they had to come back soon, tracking at night was impossible even for a professional like Daryl, and it wouldn’t be safe for them. Either they’d bring Sophia with them or they’d have to restart the search in the morning, maybe set up a search party. I rationally knew that, but my heart was breaking little by little at Carol’s sight, her quiet desperation as she sat on the edge of the car seat Shane had set for her, looking at the woods, at the exact same point her baby girl had vanished from as if her very will would eventually summon her back.

Instead, the two dirty, bloody men emerged just as the sunset, with no girl in tow.

Carol had already shot up and was close to tears once again, “You didn’t find her?”

I approached them then, carefully eyeing Daryl, who was even dirtier than Rick, but it was all the blood that worried me. I stared at him, eyebrows up in question, and he nodded, telling me he was fine.

“Her trail went cold,” Rick answerer as the jumped over the guard rail. “We’ll pick it up again in the first light.”

Carol hugger herself, “You can’t leave my daughter out there on her own to spend the night alone in the woods!”

“Hunt in the dark’s no good,” Daryl carefully told her, choosing his words. “We’d just be trippin’ over ourselves. More people to get lost.”

“But she’s twelve! She can’t be out there on her own!” Carol cried and she looked again at Rick. “You didn’t find _anything_?”

“I know this is hard, but I’m asking you not to panic. We know she was out there!” Rick said but it was clear he was panicking himself even when he willed his voice to be convincing.

“And we tracked her for a while…” Daryl completed.

“Is that _blood_?” Carol asked looking at Daryl up and down, dread dripping for her weak voice.

Daryl hesitated to answer, looking away from Carol and finding my eyes.

“We took down a walker,” Rick spoke instead.

“A walker?” Carol breathed heavily. “Oh God!”

“There was no sign he was anywhere near Sophia,” Rick tried do reason.

“And you know that how?” I asked looking at Daryl. I knew all that blood had something to do with that.

He looked at me for a moment before looking at Carol and filling the expecting silence with his answer. “We cut the son of a bitch open. Made sure.”

People were stunned shocked by that and were silent for a long moment. Carol sat on the guardrail trying to get her bearings, and sitting there she looked up at Rick again, the innocence in her voice instantly gone, “How could you just leave her out there, to begin with?” she paused. “How could you just leave her?!”

Rick let himself go then, his own desperation showing and he stared explaining all over again what had happened, trying to reason with a desperate mother who had a missing daughter as if any words would bring her peace. Even Shane tried to pipe in, but there was nothing that could be said now. No words could do anything.

“Rick, that’s not helping,” I placed herself between him and Carol’s sobbing form. “She already knows what happen, there’s nothing you can say now, ok?” Rick looked exasperated at me, trying to say something else while Shane’s look shot daggers at me, but I ignored it and just moved on. “What we need now is a plan. Actions, alright?” I looked at Daryl who was still across the guardrail. “Now, Daryl’s our tracker, he’ll lead this search. Okay?” I asked him and he nodded emphatically. “We do as he says. We leave at first light and we’ll spend all day looking and the next if needed!”, and I turned to Carol, who was still sitting there behind me. “We’ll do all we can, Carol, we ain’t giving up, this I promise you.” Weakly, Carol nodded, closely supported by Lori. I nodded back and looked again at Rick. “Now let’s just cool down and get some rest ‘cause tomorrow’ll be a long day and I want everybody up before dawn.”

The silence that followed was filled only by Carol’s weak cries on Andrea’s arms and Ricks loud, shocked stare at me. He then turned around and left the group, going to walk alone among the cars.

“Sam?” Lori called from where she was still sitting by Carol, just as Daryl hopped over it and went to the RV, leaving us alone. “You can’t seriously think Rick had any intention of leaving Sophia?”

“Never said that, Lori,” I then crouched in front of Carol, resting her hands on the woman’s knees but still speaking to Lori. “I know at that moment he thought that was the only thing he could do and I’m sure he regrets that decision with every breath. Really, wouldn’t want to be on his shoes.” At that Lori nodded, somehow relieved. “Carol? You need to eat something and rest a little. We’ll all be going to the woods tomorrow to look for her and you’ll need to be able to stand on your feet.”

“Can’t think of eating now when she’s out there!”

“I know. It’s fine. You don’t have to think, we’ll take care of you, ok? You’ll just eat and lie down until the sun comes up,”

“I wanna stay here…”

I shook my head, “I know you do, but you won’t, ok?” I tried to say it and gently as possible. “Sophia will need her mom strong, staying here all night won’t do it. I’ll have someone watching all the time. Okay? Please, let’s go?”

I got up and reached for Carol’s hands, who looked up at me with her eyes filled with tears for a moment until she decided to take my hands and get up.

“But who’s gonna take care of you?” Carol surprised me by asking, still holding my hands.

“Me?” I took a second to understand and shook my head, “I’m fine, Carol…”

“I’m sick worried about my baby. You need to take care of yours too. If I gotta eat and rest, so do you. You haven’t eaten all day.”

“Go, Sam,” Lori spoke. “We’ll watch over her.”

“Yeah, go eat something,” Andrea agreed.

“See if you get some sleep,” and with that Lori leaded Carol away in the direction of the RV.

I watched them go and just as they got to the door Daryl hopped out of the RV, a shy look at Carol who nodded at him pressing her lips in an attempted smile. Daryl moved to stand by be.

“Got you some soup,” he pressed an opened can with a spoon inside in my hand.

“What about you?” I took it and felt the can was warm. My stomach growled at the prospect of warm food.

“Had beans just now. Come,” he turned around trusting I’d follow and led me to the nearest car where he opened the back door and pointed at the seat. “Ya sleep’ere, I’ll take the front seat ‘til it’s my turn to watch.”

My nose prickled and my chest warmed up. I felt so grateful for having someone making decisions for me for once I couldn’t even understand what I was feeling and had no idea what to say. I paused and Daryl just nodded in the seat’s direction once again, making me move to sit and start having my tomato soup. After the first spoonful I drained the can in a minute, starved and desperate for nutrition and decided not to think at all before dropping the can and spoon to the floor of the car and lying down. I could only hear the door of the car being closed before descending into sleep.


	21. Day 67, part 1

There was a bell. A freaky, loud church bell, sounding clearly among the trees of the eerie silent woods. It felt like we were in a scene of a trash horror movie, with a church bell sounding distant yet loud in the woods, the very same woods where Sophia was nowhere to be found. Where nearly the entire group had been wandering for what felt like hours following Daryl’s lead. Where a little hope had been found, only to be shredded again when we found it was not Sophia inside that abandoned tent.

So we ran, following the church bell as if the church itself was calling for us, tired, mumbled words saying it could be someone who’d found her, or herself, hope flagging up instantly as we ran, stopping only on the tree line where there was a small graveyard before the church could be seen.

“This can’t be it,” Shane said immediately as he looked around. “Got no steeple, no bells,” but was ignored as Rick started walking fast towards it, Daryl right by his side with me catching up immediately as well as the others followed. Shane still insisted this could not be the right place, the bells should have been coming from somewhere else. The church itself was empty but for three or four dormant walkers who woke up as soon as the opening door made a loud banging noise against the wall. I entered right after Daryl and stood with the others as I watched him along with Rick and Shane killing them all.

“Hey!” I loudly whispered. “Enough! One hit on the brain’s enough,” making Rick and Shane stop their plowing into the already dead’s heads. We all looked around in a bit of a daze at the silent church, the others oozing in as we started looking around doors and close to the altar, weapons still ready.

“Hey, JC?” Daryl said as he looked at the cross. “You taking requests?” and then he was running out of the church faster than anybody else when the bells started sounding again somewhere absurdly close to us, only so we’d find out the bells were programmed and sounding from a soundbox by the side of the church.

“It’s a timer…” he told people, disappointment dripping from his voice. “It’s on a timer…”

“Fuck,” I whispered under my breath, my hand that held a tomahawk rising to clear the sweat from my forehead.

“I’m going back inside…” we all heard Carol’s defeated voice announce and most followed her inside, Daryl and I included.

The desperate mother sat on the front row for a moment before kneeling and posing her hands in front of her. She then started praying aloud, crying, somehow blaming herself for what was happening to her daughter, saying she had prayed wrong and that if she had been a bad person, she was the one who should be punished, not Sophia. I felt like running to her and shaking her off of it, telling her she’d been so much as a victim of everything as her girl, and that she should never add guilt to the pain she was already feeling. I couldn’t, though, so I just took a hard, painful breath and walked away, leaving the church hurriedly through the left side door.

“You okay?” Daryl asked immediately as he followed me out and found me by a tree with my face buried in my hands.

“That’s just,” I paused to sniffle into my hands. “That’s just so fuckin’ sad. The things she’s saying, what she’s feeling...”

“Shouldn’t blame herself…” Daryl agreed in a low voice, his crossbow in his hand pointing to the ground as he looked around and at me repeatedly.

“No, she shouldn’t…” I lifted my head, hands drying my tears. “She needs to blame someone but don’t feel it’s right to blame Rick because he didn’t mean to, so she’s taking the guilt.”

Daryl said nothing, just stood there with me, probably at a loss of words. He didn’t understand deep feelings, I guess, like most men, he couldn’t know what was going through a desperate mother’s mind now, so he could only take my words for the truth. I was about to be a mother too; I guess I was abler to imagine her pain than he was.

We saw Andrea and Shane talking as they walked around the graveyard, animatedly, being that in a good way or not.

“Did you know that’s what’d happened?” I asked Daryl as I observed them.

“What?”

“Andrea tried to stay at the CDC to die?”

He took a second to answer, “Nah. Just saw how she and Dale were the last ones out.”

“She tried to do as Jackie did and Dale didn’t let her.”

“Yeah, I heard them too.”

“That’s some deep shit right there, I gotta tell you…”

“We don’t gotta think of that now,” Daryl moved his eyes from Andrea to look at me again. “She’s a hella grown woman. We gotta other things to worry now.”

“She’s grieving, don’t know if she want to be alive or not… All worried about guns and her own pistol and stuff, she’s just trying to think o’ something else. If she wanted to be dead she’d found a way by now. Wondered to the woods until she found a walker or whatever.”

“Yeah, as I said, we gotta other things to worry now.”

“Sophia...” I looked down.

“Gonna get dark soon,” Daryl told me as he looked up at the sky. “We wandered too far from the road, gotta take these people back.”

“Already?” I asked looking at him. “Seems like we just stared…”

“Yeah, it’s about four now.”

“Feels too early to stop. Like we just started.”

“Been at it for hours,” he disagreed. “People are tired. Ain’t you?”

“Nah, I’m fine. Wanna keep on a while longer.”

“They can’t. Will get harder to get back to the road later, gotta head back now.”

“I ain’t the only one,” I nodded towards where Rick paced on the graveyard. “He ain’t stopping now, I’m sure.”

Daryl looked at him too and took a moment to speak, nibbling on his lower lip. “Guilt’s eatin’ him alive.”

“Why he’ll keep going. I think I should stay with him.”

“You stayin’, I’m staying. Shane can get the others back to the road.”

I crossed her arms and shook my head a little, “You navigate better than he does. He gets lost on these woods with them all we’re fucked again.”

“You want _me_ to take ‘em back?” Daryl asked nonplussed, turning to now stand facing me, “Split up?”

“I’d rather you go with me but I don’t trust Shane to take them back safe. I mean, look at that,” I now pointed at where Shane and Rick were now talking, heads low, their bodies tense in agitation. “You think they got an ounce of common sense now between ‘em two?” and I uncrossed my arms and started walking towards the two of them. “Nah. I trust _you_ to keep tracking and looking even as you keep them all safe.”

“You won’t have much light left,” Daryl said as he followed me. “Better go back soon. Ya sure you’ll find your way?”

“You’ll point me,” I smiled at him. “Won’t get lost.”

He just grunted in response, clearly unpleased with my decision, but complied either way. He stopped walking when we reached the others from the group as I kept on walking until I met Rick and Shane. They stopped talking as I arrived.

“Let’s continue for a while, you and me,” I told Rick. “Daryl will guide the others back to the road. An hour or so, then we gotta head back ‘cause it will get dark.”

Rick looked at Shane as it seemed to me he was telling his friend that he’d been right about something, because next thing Shane said was, “Alright, fine, but you’re going, I’m going,” and he left no space for discussion, for the turned to walk away and back to the group. “Ya’ll gonna follow the creek bed back, ok? Daryl, you’re in charge. Three of us are gonna hang back, search this area another hour or so, just to be thorough.”

I could not help but roll my eyes – I’d always found people who rolled their eyes annoying, but I caught myself doing it more than I wished when it came to Shane – I was just glad people were all looking at Shane now not to see it. The man was unbelievable with his need to be the one giving our orders, even when the decisions had not been his, but I had way too much in my head to try to convince him otherwise.

Only Daryl looked at me and saw it, and asked aloud, “You sure ‘bout that?”

I nodded as I walked towards him “Yeah, I’m sure. We’ll catch up with you guys or meet back at the road.”

“Alright,” he said only for me when I got near him and the others stopped hearing to pay attention to something little Carl was saying. ‘Still got water?”

“I’m out but Shane’s got some, we’ll share.”

“You loaded?” he pointed at my two guns tucked on my shoulder holsters.

“Still full, just hope I won’t need it.”

“’Kay. See you in a bit,” and Daryl turned to leave.

“Hey,” I reached out to touch his arm, making him stop and look at me. My hand glided down his arm for a moment before I let go, “Careful out there. Don’t die, ok?”

He gave one of those little, one-sided smirks, as if forcing himself not to smile, and said, “I won’t,” looked at me for another moment to see me nod with a little smile too, and turned away, meeting Lori and Rick along the way. “Here, I got a spare. Take it,” as he handed Lori a small gun.

The group walked away to where Daryl led them and I stood there with Rick and Shane and, now that I noticed, Carl.

“Hey,” I called him and Carl smiled up at me. “You staying?”

“Yeah!” he said proudly. “I’ll help look, she’s my friend.”

I smiled, shaking my head and looking again at the retreating group, at Daryl’s back, and then at Carl again. “You’re a brave little man, you know that? Gotta talk your dad into letting me teach you some stuff soon.”

“Like what?” his attention peaked.

I nearly regraded saying it because Carl was only too eager to imagine things he wanted to learn how to do. Shoot, use a knife, kill a walker. Shane tried to distract him from this conversation as Rick wandered back into the church for a few minutes, alone. I didn’t totally regret saying it, though. I knew he’d have to learn or he’d end up like Sophia, however it was that Sophia had or was going to end up, anyways.

The four of us walked away from the church area a while later, after checking our weapons again and taking small sips of water each, and moved on into the woods. Quietly, we walked in line, Rick opening it, followed by Carl and I, with Shane covering the rear. The woods were uncomfortably warm and wet, bugs finding their spots on our skins to stick on the sweat. I thought Carl would need something for the bites later, hoping we’d found something for it on the cars back on the road. It was all very quiet and it was easy to keep listening to any sounds around and let my mind roam at the same time. I knew I’d have to stop to pee soon and wasn’t happy with the thought. I hated peeing in the woods.

A noise cut off any wandering thoughts from all of our minds. We stopped, attention peaking, even Carl understanding the need for silence now. It was a rustling sound, like feet walking softly on leaves, but we couldn’t see anything yet. Opening the line, Rick pointed to where the sound was coming and we restarted walking, ever so slowly, until it was finally visible. A deer, and a large grown one at that, was pacing just there ahead of us.

“Daryl was here we’d be barbecuing tonight…” I whispered not minding if any of them head me.

Carl was edging close to the deer now, slowly, light on his feet, and I could see, from where I stopped to watch, the joy radiating from him. The deer just stood there with its majestic antlers, head turned to the boy as it too observed him as if it had never seen the dangers of a human before. I caught herself smiling and looking at the other men, who had their eyes trained on Carl, just as stunned as I was.

That, that right there; that was why it was all worth it. Nature was still following its own course, beauty still existed, there was still hope, life. Even with the world decaying, children could still be joyful and see beautiful things. There was hope.

And then hope was shot in the stomach by a rifle.

It took seconds for any of us to register what had happened, and even after we moved, what the _fuck_ had happened was not clear. The loud shotgun still echoed in my ears and Carl was on the ground, as still as the fallen deer before him. Rick ran mumbling _no_ over and over to his son, and I was suddenly not where I had stood anymore, I was across the clearing, both my guns out and trained on a man’s head, yelling at him to drop the rifle.

“I didn’t see him! I didn’t see him, I swear!”

He was on his knees even if I never told him to kneel, his rifle on the floor without hesitation.

“Where the fuck did you come from?!” I yelled, desperation clear on my voice.

 _Carl was shot! He got shot!_ My mind kept repeating desperately in the background.

“A farm! There’s a farm! Was hunting! You gotta take him there!”

“Where?”

“That way!” he pointed to his left, his tearful eyes traveling from the farm’s direction to me and to Carl in a nauseating speed. “Less than two miles, straight ahead, there’s no missing it!”

“Why should I take him there?! You fuckin’ shot him!”

“Mr. Greene! Hershel! He’s a vet! He’ll help! Please, take him there!”

I turned, replacing my guns on the holster. As scared as I was I didn’t feel like the big, crying man was a threat right now. Shane was right there, his rifle pointing at the man anyways, and behind him, Rick shook and held on to Carl.

“There’s a doctor!” I yelled.

“Get up!” Shane yelled at the man.

“That way?” I asked pointing.

“Yes!” the man cried as Shane grabbed his arm to make him get up. “Tell him Otis sent you! That there’s been an accident! He’ll help!”

“You’d better pray he’ll help!” I barked at him and turned to Shane. “I’ll run ahead, get them ready. Shane!” I cried to make Shane focus on me, his terrifyingly angry eyes finally meeting mine. “I’ll run ahead. You drag this sonofabitch with you. Rick!” I turned and ran to him, crouching by his side. “Rick, look at me!” Rick tried to focus on my face, looking up. “There’s a farm with a doctor. Shane will lead you there, I’m running ahead!” and I left him and went back to Otis, who was on his feet, a poor shape of a man. “Two miles you said?”

“Give or take, yes, please go, he’ll help!”

I heard nothing else. Turning on my spot, I sprint up to a fast run, trees flying past me. It was hard to keep up a good speed with them all around, leaves and twigs all around, but nothing mattered. My legs were burning and I could feel the energy being drained from me at every passing second, but I couldn't stop. It was not an option. Rick was coming with Carl and I had to get to this farm, I had to get them ready, I had to convince them to get ready to help. The shot still echoed in my mind even as I ran, feeling my heartbeat in my head, my wrist aching more than it had ever ached in my life. Worried about the direction and the speed, I couldn’t avoid the thin branch in front of my face and felt a sharp, painful sting, but chose to ignore it, even though I could feel the blood coming out of my eyebrow.

No matter. Run, get Carl help. Run, faster.

Finally, after what felt like an hour, I finally crossed a line of trees and found myself in a large, empty field, a sumptuous farm home far ahead. This was it, the hunter who'd shot Carl was telling the truth. It made me run even faster now, no matter how tired I was and how dark the edges of my eyesight were getting. I jumped over a wooden fence that separated the field from the area near the house, and as I did, I saw people coming out of the house to stand on the porch, some female voice yelling. Getting even closer now, I saw a white-bearded man had a rifle in hand, even though he wasn't pointing it at me. I hoped this was the vet Otis had talked about.

"We need help!" I screamed even before stopping in the grassy area before the stairs that led to the porch. "Otis shot someone! A kid! He was hunting and shot a kid!"

Behind the white-bearded man there were two or three women, I couldn't remember because there were bright spots in my eyes now, and blood oozing into my left eye, and one of them said something like "He would never do that!"

"It was an accident. He shot the deer, didn't see the boy. Carl! Got shot right in the stomach! Please, we need help, Otis said you would help!"

"Where is Otis?" the man asked firmly.

"He's on his way, and Rick – the father, is bringing him, I ran ahead –"

"There they are," the other woman with a heavy southern accent pointed to the field. I turned and saw the small dot that was Rick carrying Carl, running as fast as he could.

"That's them!" I turned back to them, "That's Rick, the kid's his son, he's unconscious. Please! Otis said you're a vet, that you could help. Please!"

The man eyed me for another moment, watching me catch my breath, pleading in my bloody eyes – I wasn’t even seeing alright – then looked again at the field where Rick was getting closer and thought for a moment. Now, on the line of threes, we could see Otis appear, also running, Shane with him. Seeing Otis was safe, the man seemed to make a decision. He turned to the women on the porch and started giving instructions, both of them followed by a younger one rushing inside to get ready.

I could have cried in relief and breathed out heavily, bending to rest my hands on my knees, before practically crawling to go sit on the porch steps, head instantly falling between my knees as I caught my breath and my vision darkened a bit more.

"Are you okay?" a woman's voice came from behind me.

"Uh, I..." I paused and tried lifting my head, which was more difficult I'd imagined, and looked behind me a bit, seeing the girl standing there just slightly. "Not really... Cut myself. Feeling faint."

The girl said nothing more and I returned to my position, trying to control my body and mind and not fall unconscious when there was someone else who needed more help than me. Looking away, I saw Rick had just crossed the fence and was starting to get closer, Carl's dead weight slowing him down. I forced my body to get up as Rick got nearer.

“Inside,” I told him, trying to be firm but failing miserably. “Get him inside, they’ll help!”

Ricky was crying and wheezing with Carl limp on his arms, but still, he moved on, a hopeful look at me as he climbed the stairs, crossed the porch and stormed into the farmhouse with me on his heels.

“In here!” we heard the farmer’s voice from a room and rushed in. “Put him on the bed,” the man ordered and Rick obeyed without a second thought. People around were working fast as the doctor instructed them, Rick and I just standing there among them, lost.

“Your name?” Rick stuttered, nearly unable to say his own name, but managed. “Rick, we’re gonna do everything we can, ok? You?”

I took a moment, eyes glued on Carl, to understand he was speaking to me. “What?” I looked at him.

“Your name?”

“Sam. I’m Sam.”

“Ok, now, Rick, Sam, you need to give us some space. You know his blood type?”

“A positive. Same as mine.”

“Yours?” Hershel asked me.

“I’m O neg. I’ll give it too.”

“No!” Rick surprised everyone by saying firmly, different from his own voice seconds ago. He looked around at people and explained, “She can’t donate. She’s pregnant.”

Hershel looked harder at me for a moment, still bent over to put pressure on Carl’s wound. “Maggie, you take Sam away. Take care of that cut and help her rest.”

“I’m fine!” I said immediately, a hand rising to wipe the blood from my eye. “Please don’t worry about me, Carl’s the one –”

“There’s plenty of people helping Carl,” Maggie told me as she approached and unceremoniously grabbed my hand. “Come on.”

“No, no, please, it’s fine, I’m okay!”

“Please Sam, we need you fine too…” Rick asked me, his voice tired and desperate, and I stopped. There was really nothing I could do in that room, even though I’d like nothing more than to help, and Rick was already too concerned and despairing too much to need to worry about me too. So I nodded, looked at Carl once again and huffed a breath before allowing Maggie to drag me out.

“You too Rick, we need space!” Hershel kept saying as I left. “But don’t go too far, we’ll need your blood.”

I barely noticed Otis cross by me, even though he did look desperately apologetic, he entered the room Rick and I left. Shane was there and went straight to Rick, holding him, wiping the blood from his friend’s face, but I was away from them, being sat on the dining room table in front of Maggie so fast I didn’t even see anything happening. The edges of my sight were growing darker again ad Maggie placed a bowl with water in front of me, cotton, bandages, and a bucket on the ground.

“You look like throwing up at any moment,” Maggie explained at my questioning gaze. “Here, have some water.”

“Lori doesn’t know… Lori doesn’t know!” Rick’s voice came from the next room.

“Who’s Lori?” Maggie asked me as I gulped on the water, only now noticing how terribly thirsty I’d been. I swallowed and dried my lips with the back of my hand, not seeing the dark smudge it left there.

“Carl’s mom…”

“There’s more of you?” Maggie said as she lifted a cloth to my face and started wiping the blood.

“We got a group. We’re stuck on the road, we lost a girl, we’re looking for her. Lori’s with them, we were in the woods looking for Sophia and they are heading back to the road… Lori doesn’t know…”

“Why did I let him come with us?” Rick was crying, Shane knelt on the floor in front of him. “I should’ve sent him with Lori!”

Shane was saying things to him now but from across the room I couldn’t hear, and for the moment I couldn’t hear anything else because everything went dark and all the water I’d drank refused to stay in. Maggie was quick enough to grab the bucket for me to throw up in. I only faintly heard the door to the room being opened and Hershel calling Rick back in, saying he’d need the blood.

We all heard Carl then. He woke up and was screaming, loud, blood-curling cries coming from inside the room and I made it to move, to instinctively get up and go there, but Maggie stopped me by placing a hand on my forearm and shaking her head slowly. There was nothing I could do and I hated it, _fuck_ , I hated it so much, that feeling of powerlessness, of uselessness. So I just stopped, feeling more tired than ever, tears silently escaping my eyes. Carl stopped after a while, surely passed out from the pain.

“You need to rest,” Maggie told me and she replaced the bucket on the floor. “You ran all the way over here?”

“Yeah… Otis said it was two miles.”

“When was the last time you ate?”

“Sometime this morning…”

Maggie restarted cleaning my eyebrow and I didn’t have the energy to flinch with the alcohol there, but it did burn like hell. “I think you’ll need two or three stitches here.”

“Don’t, just… Put a band-aid, it will close…”

“Dad will look at it later, I’ll just disinfect and cover for now. Try some more water, just little sips, don’t drink too fast.”

We went quiet as I did as Maggie said, my eyes closed tight as I fought another wave of nausea.

“Thank you…” I whispered weakly after a moment, resting the glass back on the table. “Carl… He’d be dead…”

“Don’t mention it. It’s a kid, we’d never leave him hanging.”

“We know Otis didn’t mean to.”

“We sure of that too. He’s a good man, Otis,” Maggie stated and I nodded, believing her. “How far along are you?”

“Oh, uh… Not really sure, but I guess around twelve weeks, thirteen?”

“You’ll have to eat something soon… I think we got some vitamins somewhere we can give you.

“You’re doing too much already... Maggie, right?”

“Yeah.

I tried a weak smile at her and we went quiet again as Maggie finished cleaning my cut and my face and covered it with a large patch, still encouraging me to slowly sip on the water. A few minutes later, Maggie brought me a clean shirt, because I still didn’t know, but mine would have to be thrown away, caked in blood. Rick came out of the room looking pale and sweaty and sat on the couch, Shane still close to him, and they argued about how to let Lori know what happened.

“He’s out of danger for the moment,” Hershel said as he opened the door and stopped at the threshold, whipping his hands in a towel. Everybody got up, even I did, with Maggie’s help, to hear him. “but I need to remove those remaining fragments.”

“How?” Rick’s voice shook as he asked. “You saw how he was.”

“I know, and that was the shallowest one. I’ll need to go deeper and get the others. There’s more… His belly’s distended, his pressure’s dropping, which means there’s internal bleeding. A fragment must have nicked one of the blood vessels. I have to open him up, find the bleeder and stitch it. And he can’t move while I’m in there. I mean, at all. If he reacts the same as before, I’ll sever and artery and he’ll be dead in minutes. To even try this, I’ll have to put him under, but if I do he won’t be able to breathe on his own. Same bad results.”

“What – You’d need one of those...” I said walking slowly to them, near the door. “A respirator, right? Like they use in hospitals?”

“Exactly that, but more. The tube that goes with it, extra surgical supplies, drapes, sutures.”

Otis reminded Mr. Greene that the nearest hospital had burned out recently but the local high school had once been used as a help center and should have all that stocked. It was overrun, though, but Shane offered to go there anyhow, quickly backed up by Otis, who affirmed he knew the place and he’d be able to navigate it better. His wife didn’t seem to want him to go, and I totally understood her, but he had all the right arguments. He felt responsible so he’d do all he could to help. I felt like going too, I knew there was nothing I’d be able to do here, but was realistic enough to know today I would be only a nuisance – and I hated it.

Maggie touched my arm, distracting her from it, “Your group. Carl’s mom, where are they?”

“There were following the creek bed back to the road. We’re camped at the jam. They may be close to the road now.”

“I’ll go get her. What’s her name again?”

“Lori. Tell her Rick sent for her. But hey,” Maggie stopped as she was turning to leave. “The one leading them, Daryl. He won’t trust you, he won’t want to let Lori come. Tell him I said it’s fine.”

“That’s all?”

“Yeah, it will do.”

Maggie turned to leave and I saw myself alone in the living room, Rick having followed Hershel back inside the room with Carl. I slowly approached the door and leaned there, to see the boy’s small frame pale as a ghost, Rick holding his hand and Hershel taking his blood pressure.

“Take a seat, dear,” Otis’ wife told me and I startled a little before doing so, sitting in a chair close to the window. “How do you feel?”

Rick looked at me as I answered, “Faint… But I’ll manage. He’s more important now.”

“Not much else we can do right now, in fact…” Hershel said. “I can take a look at your cut now.”

“Maggie closed it, it’s small and cleaned. Please don’t worry about me.”

“Patricia, please go get these two something to eat. That leftover soup will be good sustenance for them now, especially Sam with child.”

The kind-looking woman nodded and left the room. Hershel exited as well, leaving us three in a heavy, tired silence.

“My boy was shot…” Rick started after a couple of minutes. I just looked at him, waiting. “He was just looking at a deer. And he was shot…”

“It was a terrible accident, Rick…”

“We just had to look for Sophia.”

“And we still are. We’ll deal with all this.”

“He shouldn’t have been there…”

“Don’t, Rick,” I said as firmly as I could. “There’s enough going on for you to start torturing yourself. None of this if your fault. Any one of us could have been shot then, could have been you, could have been me. There’s no use thinking these things now.”

Rick looked from Carl to me, “How are you holding up?”

“I’m fine,” I said tiredly and rested my elbows on my knees, lowering my head. “People have got to stop worrying about me when there’s a shot child…”

“Your child’s as important as mine.”

“Mine’s unborn and is safe in here.”

“You ran all the way over here… May have saved Carl. Got them ready to help him,” he said and I looked up at him. “Thank you.”

I took a moment to answer, nodding slowly at him. “Is what we do, Rick. Kinda thing we gotta go for each other now. All of us.”

“We’re all together in this, ain’t we?”

“Yeah,” I tried a smile. “In the fuckin’ apocalypse, we’re all we got.”


	22. Day 67, part 2

I had my eyes closed as I sat on a rocking chair on the porch of the farmhouse. Everything was silent now, except for my own ears ringing loudly in stress. I breathed in, allowing my head to rest on the back of the chair, and out, slowly, my feet nudging the wooden floor to rock the chair softly. Otis and Shane had left for the high school, Maggie was gone looking for Lori, and the others were around Carl. It was a quiet moment, which I highly valued. I had to cool down, allow my body to return to normal, allow my brain to stop screaming.

I knew it wouldn’t last long. It never did.

The door to the house creaked open to let out both Rick and Hershel, who joined me on the porch. Hershel sat on the chair by my side and Rick stood on the railing, looking outside.

“Your farm is beautiful, Mr. Greene,” I said in a low voice as if scared to mess up with the rare peace of the moment. “I can see you take very good care of it.”

“It’s been in my family 160 years.”

“I can’t believe how serene it is,” Rick said looking out. “How untouched. You’re lucky.”

“We aren’t completely unscathed…” the old man disagreed from his chair. “We’ve lost friends, neighbors. The epidemic took my wife and my stepson.”

I nodded looking down, “I’m sorry… It’s like there ain’t nobody alive who ain’t lost someone these days.”

“It sure is, but my daughters were spared. I’m thankful to God for that. These people here? All we got left is each other.”

“Yeah… We know how it is. We, our group… We’re also al we got.”

“Let’s hope we can ride it out in peace until there is a cure.”

Rick looked back into the porch and his eyes met mine, we both thinking the same. Rick looked down and out to the field again as I tried to choose my words.

“Mr. Greene… We’ve been on the road for a while now. We tried shelter in different places. One of them was at the CDC, in Atlanta. The most important place nearby that’d be working on a cure,” I paused, making Hershel look at me, waiting for me to finish. “It’s destroyed. Blew up to pieces, we all nearly blew up with it. They had no cure.”

Surprisingly, he smiled. “I don’t believe it. When aids came along everyone panicked. One boy in town came down with that and some parents pulled their children from school so they didn’t have to sit in the same room.”

“This is a whole other thing…” Rick said shaking his head and he turned to face us in the chairs, leaning against the rail.

“This is what we always say, ‘this one’s different’. Mankind has been fighting plagues from the start. We get our behinds kicked for a while. And then we bounce back,” with a serene smile, he looked from me to Rick and back. “It’s nature correcting itself, restoring some balance.”

We exchanged a look again and Rick lowered his head, his disbelief in the man’s words clear.

“Well,” I started carefully, “I don’t believe it, Mr. Greene. I really don’t… But I’ll be more than happy to be wrong about it. I hope we’re wrong about it.”

Maggie came back on the horse with Lori by then, galloping across the same field I had run just a short while ago, the sunset painting a beautiful picture that ended up unobserved. I stood on the porch with Hershel as Rick went to meet his wife on the garden in front of the house, telling her what happened and holding her as she cried, and then leading her inside. I sat back down on the rocking chair, my throat painful at the sight of the mother’s desperation.

“Delivered your message,” Maggie told me as she climbed the steps. “You were right; he did not trust me.”

I gave her a little smile, “He was protecting the group… Takes his job very seriously.”

“He your guy?”

I huffed, “What? No… It’s – I don’t, he’s…” and I paused to get in control, and finally shook my head. “No.”

With a knowing smile, Maggie dropped it, “Did you eat already?”

“Just a glass of juice… Don’t know if I can stomach much more.”

Rick gave Carl blood once again and could barely walk after that, his face pale and sweaty, but still refused to sit when he and Lori joined Hershel and I in the dining room, so Lori could understand better what was about to happen. Later, I sat once again on a bench outside on the porch, under the shadow of the house. Maggie joined me, quietly taking a seat by my side. Sun had come down and still, Shane and Otis had not returned with the equipment, the emotions at the house growing tense by the minute. Everybody knew what they might be facing out there and everything that could go wrong, but an unspoken agreement made us not mention it, and simply wait.

Going over everything that had happened today, so far, I felt like I’d been awake for days already. So much had happened! Improvised breakfast at the road, Andrea’s drama, the search on the woods, the corpse on the tent, the church bell and the hope it arose, the disappointment, the deer, Otis, and the shot, the run, and the farm and, finally, just minutes ago, realizing Mr. Greene was actually a veterinarian.

Craziest and longest day ever.

I smiled for a moment before starting to laugh, quietly, my shoulders increasingly shaking. Maggie turned to look at me, eyes a little wide, gobsmacked.

“Sorry! It’s crazy, it’s just…” and I kept laughing. “It’s just that, you know, feels like a week ago but just a couple of hours ago, Otis –” and I paused to laugh a little more. “Otis said ‘go to Hershel, he’s a vet, he’ll help!’ and we were all like ok, well, a veteran!” I laughed more, just a little louder, and Maggie started laughing with me, understanding the line of thought. “We never thought vet meant veterinarian!”

We were still laughing softly together when a car appeared at the far, the low ruffle of the motor disturbing the silence of the farm.

“Is it them?” Maggie asked.

I stretched my neck to see over the railing, “Not all of them, we got more cars,” and I got up, squinting to try and see who was driving but the lights made it impossible. I wondered why just one car, where was everybody else, what had happened, and in a second a thousand scenarios crossed my mind, how unaware of things I was now and how uncomfortable that felt. Where was Daryl?

Glenn and Theodore hopped out of the car looking curious but calm and I sighed in relief. Seemed like everything was fine. Except for Theodore himself, who was wrapped in a blanket even though the evening was nearly as hot as the day had been and looked nearly white on his paleness. I stood on top of the stairs, waiting for them to approach.

“Holy shit, T,” I said as a hello. “You look like hell.”

He laughed and sounded high, “Gee, thanks!”

“He’s got a fever,” Glenn explained as they stopped there. “Cut’s infected. Daryl gave him a few of Merle’s pills, some antibiotics I guess.”

“Okay, come on, let’s take a look at it,” I gestured them to come up.

“You okay?” Glenn asked me as he came up and pointed at my eyebrow.

“Oh, yeah, just a twig, was nothing.”

“Did you close the gate up the road when you drove in?” Maggie asked them from where she was still sitting and both Glenn and Theodore looked past me at her, only now noticing there was someone else there.

“Uh, hi,” Glenn raised a hand lamely. “Yes, we closed it. Did the latch and everything. Hello. Nice to see you again, we met before, briefly.”

“This is Maggie,” I told them as the girl got up from the bench. “Maggie, Glenn and Theodore.”

Theo just nodded, his eyes nearly closed as if asleep, and Glenn waved again.

“Where are the others? Why only you two came?”

“Daryl decided they should stay one more night. Says he’s gonna put a sign for Sophia in case she comes back to let her know we’re looking and to wait there. Set some supplies too. They’ll all come in the morning.”

I nodded, the sense of pride I’d been feeling for Daryl showing it’s face once again.

“Look, we came to help,” Glenn kept talking. “Is there anything we can do? We got some antibiotics and painkillers if Carl needs it.”

“Come in inside. I’ll make something to eat. You too Sam, is your stomach settled enough, you think?”

“Yes, it’s definitely better.”

We followed Maggie inside and she went straight to the kitchen. I gestured them both to follow me and stopped at the bedroom’s threshold, pointing inside. Glenn and Theo solemnly entered, their faces betraying the distress in seeing Carl lying there like that. Inside, Rick and Lori saw them and nodded their greetings.

“Uh… We’re here, okay?” Glenn told them nearly in a whisper. Whatever you need.”

Glenn was a sweetheart. Not for the first time, I felt a wave of tenderness towards him. He was a gentleman, not much more than a teenager actually, he had to be what, nineteen, twenty tops? I felt like if I’d ever had a brother, I wanted him to be just like Glenn if life had given me one.

Patricia came to stitch Theo’s arm, poor woman, I could see the worry in her eyes, her heart must have been aching right now, and she had to just do _something_ as she waited for her husband to come back. I hoped he did, both he and Shane. I sat at the table with them and Glenn just paced nervously around us, because Theo was getting stitches, and many of them, with no anesthesia at all and man, that had to hurt. On the table, the sort of medication Daryl had found in Merle’s bag.

Damn, the man was a walking pharmacy! I wondered how he was coping without them now; withdrawal must be kicking his ass. Been through it, didn’t want to be on his shoes right now. And where the hell was he, anyway? Without a hand!

“Merle Dixon,” I heard Patricia say as is reading my thoughts. “Is that your friend with the antibiotics?”

Uh, tough subject. Glenn looked at me and we exchanged a second. He must have known it was hard to me to talk about it.

“No, ma’am,” he answered instead. “Merle’s no longer with us. Daryl gave us those… His brother.”

“Not sure I’d call him a friend,” Theo was able to groan out though his pain with the stitches.

“I would,” I said immediately and Theo looked at me, kind of an unreadable expression. “Merle _was_ my friend, all things considered,” I paused for a moment to gain some drama and moved on, “Horrible person! The one you’d want away from you. But ended up being my friend after all.”

“Well, horrible person or not,” Patricia looked from me to Theo, “he is your friend today. This doxycycline might have just saved your life.”

“You know what Merle was taking it for?” Maggie asked as she held Theo’s arm in place.

“The clap,” Glenn answered quickly and caught himself. Every one of us was looking at him and I fought the urge to laugh at his awkwardness. “Uh… Venereal disease. That’s what Daryl said.”

“I’d say Merle Dixon’s clap was the best thing that happened to you,” Patricia declared and this time I did laugh, out loud, just a Maggie did.

“I’m really trying not to think about that!” Theo suffered just a bit more.

Glenn left the room then, apparently unable to take Theo’s pain and the needles and his own awkwardness anymore. Poor guy, this instant crush on Maggie was palpable. She really was very pretty, and nice. I liked her a lot. I was glad to see her follow him out just a minute later, as soon as Theo’s stitches were done and she could let his arm go.

“Your turn,” Patricia told me after Theo thanked her and stumbled out of the chair, all but dragging himself over to the couch.

“Oh, God… Do I really have to?” I whined a bit.

“Come here, let me take a look.”

I got up from the chair I was in and occupied the one Theo vacated. Patricia removed my eyebrow bandage and looked the cut over before saying, “Sorry to disappoint, dear, but this will be a three or four stitches. It’s a small cut, but it went a bit deep and eyebrows tend to bleed a lot, see this?” she showed me the bandage and it was all red in new blood that had come out after Maggie tended to it.

“Yes, I figured. Let’s get on with it then…”

It did hurt a lot, the needle and the stitches perforating my skin, I could feel everything. But I didn’t cry out as much as Theo did, I’m proud to say. I ended up being four stitches, and a much smaller bandage after it was done.

A while later, I was sitting on the porch with a bowl of warm oatmeal, made with milk, and with raisins in it – oh, the heavens! Breakfast food for dinner, and the sustenance, it was just amazing. I ate is fast, but still appreciated the flavor of every spoonful. I was already scraping the bowl then a car approached. I placed it aside and got up to recognize Otis’ old truck. They were back! I got up and ran down the porch stairs just as the others left the house to greet them back.

Shane got out of the driver’s seat and took heavy bags from inside the car, and he limped his way to meet us, breathless, his eye wide and not blinking. He was a wreck. Something had gone really, really wrong, and where the fuck was Otis?

“Carl?”

“There’s still a chance,” Rick told him as Hershel took the bags and handed them to Glenn.

“Otis?” he asked Shane, also noticing his absence.

Shane looked down.

_Fuck._

He took another moment to answer, saying simply “No.”

 _Fuck_! We had just got that family’s friend killed.

There was a stunned silence and, by my side, I hear Maggie take a painful intake of breath. Hershel looked around, lost, and after a moment said “We say nothing to Patricia. Not ‘till after. I need her,” and he grabbed the heavy bags on his own again and ran inside.

Rick went to Shane and hugged him, thankful. I turned to Maggie, who was frozen on her spot and touched her shoulder. When she looked at me her green eyes were filled with tears and her lips trembled.

“I’m so sorry… God, I’m _so_ sorry, Maggie…”


	23. Day 68

Maggie had prepared a couch for me to sleep in another room, complete with sheets and a pillow with a pillowcase and all, and they smelled like fabric softener. That night, though, I was not able to sleep as easily as I had been the past few days; even though I was exhausted my body was still too alert from everything that had happened that day. The room was silent, real quiet, as was the whole house after Carl’s surgery and the news about Otis’ death.

Carl was saved. Hershel, bless the man, had saved him using the equipment Shane had brought back. Damn, that must have been a hard fight for Shane, you could see in his face how shocked he was, simply by the way his breathing had yet to return to normal when I last saw him that night, and I don’t think he had blinked in hours.

The story was weird, though… Otis told Shane to leave without him, that he’d stall the walkers? Well, I guess everybody knows the best way to stall walkers is to, you know, get eaten by them. Did Otis really sacrifice himself so Shane could bring back the equipment? Sounded weird. He was feeling guilty for shooting Carl, but was he _that_ guilty that he’d just, I don’t know, get himself eaten?

It gave me a chill to think about what I was thinking might mean. Fuck, I hoped I was wrong…

At some point, I fell asleep, but it felt like only ten minutes or so had passed when I woke up to the bright room. All was still quiet and I took a moment to understand where I was, but when I did, I felt panic surging through me. Why was everything so silent, where was everyone, is Carl ok, where are the others, is Daryl here yet?

I left the room as I tied my dreads up making a knot with two of them. In the kitchen, Maggie was pouring a cup of coffee in front of Patricia, who looked miserable, big shadows under her eyes showing she wasn’t able to sleep at all that night. I had no idea what to say. I hadn’t spoken to her yet, yesterday she had cried and cried and nothing anybody could say would make anything better. They all had cried. Maggie and Beth, her younger sister, cried because Otis had been running the farm since Maggie was a toddler, Hershel had cried because Otis had been like a son to him, but their pain was dwarfed by Patricia’s. It was clear how much of a good man Otis had been and how loved he was.

Beth looked up to see me there, standing by the kitchen door without saying a word. She nodded, trying a smile as good morning and nodded towards a chair. I was feeling terribly awkward like I shouldn’t be there, it wasn’t my place. They were a family; it should be their moment.

But Maggie rested a hand on my shoulder as I sat, “How’d you sleep?”

“Not much, but well,” I told her. “Thank you.”

She nodded and poured me coffee too. There was silence then as she sat and started buttering a toast to place in front of Patricia, who had yet to touch her coffee.

“Patricia…” I started, but I had no idea how I’d finish that sentence. “I know I and any of the others are the last people you want to talk to now…” and she raised her eyes to me, the pain there feeling like a kick on my chest. “But I’m sorry. I’m so sorry… None of what happened to Carl was his fault, and Carl is fine… Otis should be here and fine too.”

I understood then what I was feeling: guilty. This was my group, my people, and it was our very presence that got her husband killed. If I hadn’t let Carl come with us – I could have called Lori back and said no, it’s dangerous, it’s best if he stays with the larger group, but I just accepted. If I hadn’t been weak and felt sick yesterday I would have been able to go with Shane, and I would never be left behind because I’d fight and I’d come back in one piece, I would never tell Shane to leave me behind, and Otis would be safe at the farm. I could have –

But Patricia stopped my thoughts right then, reaching a hand over the table to touch mine, “Sam, listen to me. None of this was your fault. It’s not anybody’s fault. It’s a tragedy. A good man like Otis losing his life? A tragedy. The same thing the world is made of now. Not your fault.”

I was tearing up with her now. Damn, these were good people. They did not deserve this, any of this… By my side, Beth was also crying, drying her cheeks. I squeezed Patricia’s hand, thankful for her words.

Hershel came in a little while later, and then Glenn and Theo too. They offered us breakfast and I felt like we shouldn’t accept like we were already too much trouble there. Both men accepted, tough, starved, and Maggie would not allow me to not accept at least a buttered toast. Which I was thankful for because it was amazing. I even ate another one with honey, the heavens.

After eating, Hershel asked us all to help them organize a burial for Otis. There was nobody, so it would have to be just a memorial. He stayed with Carl, Rick, and Lori inside while we went outside to gather a few stones. We all heard the motor sounds coming down the road and, looking afar, I saw Daryl on his bike open the small caravan, the second car, and the RV following.

It was a good sight. My people. Daryl.

The stones were all in the hand cart already, so I motioned Glenn, Theo and Shane to go back with me to the house, and the others followed. Theo went inside to tell Rick they had arrived and I waited for them outside.

They parked by Otis’ truck. I went to stand close to where Daryl was hopping off the bike. He was as dirty as usual, as the last shower he’d taken at the CDC had been months ago, and he didn’t smile, a worried look on his face as he looked me over, his eyes stopping on my eyebrow.

“Hey,” he greeted me, “What happened there?”

I raised my hand to the bandage, “Just a twig as I was running.”

“What the hell happened yesterday?”

He asked but everyone else wanted to hear it too. Dale, Carol, Andrea, they all stood close to the bike to hear me tell it all. I summarized it all since we split up at the church until Otis’s fate and the surgery. They all looked around nervously at the Greene’s, who were all standing there close to the porch stairs when I told one of them had died as he tried to save Carl. When I finished, Rick and Lori were already out.

“And how is he now?” Dale asked, looking from me to Rick who was behind me.

“He’ll pull through. Thanks to Hershel and his people,” and he looked around to find Shane standing a bit away from the group, “and Shane. We’d have lost Carl of not for him.”

There were hugs and thank gods after that, everyone relieved the boy was alright. As they did so, I turned to face the family who’d help us so much since yesterday and introduced each one of them.

“You’re all welcome to stay as Carl recovers and you look for the lost girl,” Hershel said firmly, and I could see he was not comfortable at all with all of us there. “You can set camp there under the trees,” he pointed to the right of the house, a bit ahead. “Rick, Lori, you’re welcome to stay in with Carl as he recovers,” and at their nods, he looked again around at everyone gathered around, “but before you set camp, we have a funeral to attend to.”

* * *

We all stood awkwardly a little behind, but still close enough to form a half-circle around the pile of stones that was Otis’ grave. Hershel was praying as each one of them placed a stone on it, and Patricia was crying quietly as she listened to the words. As I stood between Daryl and Glenn, not knowing what to do with my hands, I heard Hershel call Otis their most precious asset, and my heart clenched a little in guilt.

We got that man killed.

“Shane?” we all looked at him as Hershel called his name, and his flinch was visible. “Will you speak for Otis?”

He denied promptly, but Patricia insisted because he had been with Otis until the last moment. He’d shared his last minutes of life. At her teary words, he couldn’t say no anymore. So he started talking, narrating the last moments, how he was limping and hurt and Otis said he had to go, thrust him the bags and ordered him to go ahead, to run, that he would take the rear and cover him. When he looked back, Otis was gone, it’s what Shane said.

Ok, but, _what_? If Shane was the one hurt, limping, why did Otis was the one to be left behind? Why didn’t they both run, why didn’t Otis help Shane run, did he really have to stay behind and try alone to detain the walkers even with no more rounds to shoot? I mean… _What?_

Slowly people left the area, Patricia remaining behind to be alone for a moment at the grave. I walked away with Daryl in the direction of where we’d set camp.

“We gotta start looking for Sophia,” he said. “Nearly mid-morning already, can’t waste time.”

“Okay. I’ll separate the group in two, some can stay here and set the camp. I’ll see if Mr. Greene can help with the area, maybe he knows better places where we can look for her,” we approached the trees and I saw Shane sitting on the RV steps and Rick talking to Lori at a shade. Mr. Greene was there, speaking to Dale nearby. “Mr. Greene?” I called out and he looked over as Daryl and I approached him by a car. “We’re ready to restart our search for Sophia. I was wondering if you can give us some information about the area?”

He was really helpful, saying how far away the creek elongated, how many acres of woodland surrounded the farm, and Daryl asked him questions about the terrain. They were talking for a few minutes, Rick, Shane, and Andrea also approaching, apparently ready to help with the search, when Maggie brought a map.

“That’ll help a lot, Maggie, thank you,” I told her. “We can set specific areas and set groups for each, make sure we cover it all. It will be easier from now on.”

“We’ll do it right now, then,” Rick said, eyeing the map. “We can set the groups later on,” and he pointed at the farm on the map, his finger sliding to an area right at the south of it, “but today we can start –”

“Not you,” Mr. Greene stopped him. “Not today. You gave three units of blood. You wouldn’t be hiking five minutes in this heat without passing out,” and he looked at Shane, “and your ankle? Push it now, you’ll be laid out for a month. No good to anybody.”

“It’s fine, just us for today then,” I said nodding at Daryl’s direction. “The others stay to set up camp.”

“You sure you can handle it?”, Maggie asked me. “Felt sick yesterday.”

“Yesterday I didn’t eat, I ran over two miles and there was all the scare… I’m fine today, ate well, we got water. I’ll be fine.”

“I’ll keep an eye on her,” Daryl said as he took the map and started folding it. “We’ll go back to the creek, work our way from there.”

“Shane, you can take a car and circle back to the road,” I told him. “See if there are any signs of Sophia there.”

“Sure thing,” he agreed promptly.

“Alright,” Rick said and Mr. Greene was right, he did look pale and weak. “Tomorrow then, we’ll start doing this right.”

“That means we can’t have our people out there with just knives,” Shane said stopping people from leaving the conversation. “They need the gun training we’ve stopped since the quarry.”

“Shane, we’ve been through this,” I said, mentally rolling my eyes. Again, really? “Gun trainin’, alright, but guns will always be our last resource. The noise and all, I’d prefer is we did a knife training.”

“I’d prefer you not carrying guns on my property,” Mr. Greene said before Shane could retort. “We’ve managed this far without turning this into an armed camp.”

“All due respect, you get a crowd of those things wandering in here –”

“Not our decision, Shane,” I cut him off, I knew where he was going. He immediately breathed hard, licking his teeth with his lips closed. “It’s Mr. Greene’s property, we’re guests here. Hell, we ain’t even guests, we all but barged in and he was kind enough to let us stay for a while,” and I looked from Shane’s angry expression to the others around. Daryl nodded at me when I looked at him, and Rick did too. “Daryl and I will put our guns away when we come back, we’ll need them out there,’ and as I finished I nodded at the direction of Rick’s gun.

He understood, being the first one to take it off and place it on the hood of the car. Shane was clearly pissed and not bothering to hide it as he did the same.

“I hate to be the one to ask, but somebody’s got to,” Shane said, “What happens if we find her and she’s bit?”

“You know damn well what we gotta go,” Daryl said, his voice grave.

“We all know,” I agreed.

“And what do we hell her mother?” Maggie asked, a bit of a shock in her face.

“The truth,” was all Andrea said for the whole conversation.

I saw it, there was a look between Maggie and her father. He shook his head at her, telling her something. But well, not my business. My business was finding Sophia, in any state she might be now, having people safe and leave as soon as Carl could travel.

“Shane, will you set up security?” I said to him, letting it pass.

“I’ll gather and secure all weapons,” he said after a nod, now in control of his anger. “Make sure no one’s carrying ‘till we’re at a practice range off-site. But Mr. Greene, I do request one rifleman on the lookout. Dale’s got experience.”

Mr. Greene looked at me for a moment. Shane’s request made a lot of sense, a lookout was crucial in such an open area like this.

“People would feel safer,” Rick also agreed. “Less inclined to carry a gun.”

He thought for a moment, looked at us and nodded, solemnly.

“Thank you, Mr. Greene,” I told him and looked at Daryl by my side. With a nod, we both walked away as I mumbled only to him, “Damn, sometimes I want so fuckin’ much to just bitch slap this guy!”

He laughed quickly in surprise at my comment and stopped me by the trees, “You sure you fine to go tracking today?”

“I’m sure.”

“You feel anything, you tell me and we come right back, alright?”

I smiled. This time, I don’t know why, I didn’t get bothered by his worry. I was sweet. I said nothing, just smiled up at him and he frowned in confusion.

“ _What?_ ”

“You,” I said simply.

“Me what?”

“All worried ‘bout me.”

He made a pfff sound that made me smile more, and looked down, “Just don’ wanna have to carry your ass all the way back to the farm, is all.”

I laughed and would retort but Maggie approached, “Hey, sorry,” she said for interrupting. “I got a pharmacy run in town, we’re low on meds. Rick suggested Glenn should go with me. That ok?”

“Uh…” I thought, considering the implications. “Is it safe?”

“Pretty much, yes. I’ve done this before alone,”

“And Mr. Greene?”

“Told him already, it’s fine.”

“Well, I don’t see why not, if he’s up to it.”

She nodded with a little smile and moved to speak to Glenn and I looked back at Daryl, “We gotta take water and something to eat during the day.”

“I’ll get somethin’ from the bag,” and he moved away to the RV, where our bags were still piled under the table. Oh, speaking of water.

“Rick?” I called him out and he looked at me as he passed the area to where we’d set the tents. “We need to bring all those water gallons from the road, you up to it?”

He nodded across the area, ‘I’ll just check up on Carl and I’ll head to the road with Shane, then.”

“We got water, more than enough,” Maggie said from near me where she was talking to Glenn. “Got five wells in our land, the house draws directly from number one,” and she pointed somewhere near the house. Well number two is right over there,” she pointed again, “we use it for the cattle but it’s just as pure. Take all you need. There’s a cart and containers in the generator shed behind the house.”

This girl was an angel. Rick didn’t have to go to the road and could stay with Carl, which was better for everyone. With Daryl leaving with me, Glenn going to the pharmacy with Maggie, Theo with his arm stitched up and Dale on guard, there were no other people to go get the gallons.

People dispersed and I started checking on my weapons, how much ammo I had, the knife on my hip, choosing one god axe from the shed Maggie had mentioned, and then I had to go inside the farmhouse to use the bathroom before we left. Daryl was impatiently waiting for me, saying we were wasting time and light and to just fucking go already. So we did, and on the way out of the farm, we found part of the group standing around one of the wells Maggie had pointed out. Strangely, Glenn was sitting on the side of it, legs in, with a rope around his waist.

“What’s going on?” I asked and Daryl huffed by my side, knowing it would be something else to stall us.

“There’s a walker down the well,” Dale told me as if this was enough information.

I looked at Glenn, “And you look like you’re ready to go down there, _why_?” and I leaned a bit to look down there. Yep, there was a walker. The ugliest, most disgusting walker I had seen so far. I made a face and a weird sound, I assume.

“We gotta take it out of there,” Shane said, same old tone. “Thought of shooting it but the brains will come out and probably infect the water.”

I looked down again, “Probably infected already. And, hold on, your plan for getting the walker out of there is sending _Glenn_ down?”

“Yeah,” Andrea said, her pose similar to Shane’s. “He’ll tie it and we’ll pull him out, no big deal.”

I laughed. I really did laugh, “No big deal? Ok then. But just – just a quick question: _have you all lost your fuckin’ minds_?!”

“Now hold on,” Shane started taking that famous step towards me as he had done many times before and, again, Daryl took a step closer. “We need clean water, the only way to –”

“Only way?!” I stopped him and turned to the others, “Maggie, didn’t you say there are five wells in the property?”, she nodded and I looked at the others and at Shane again. “That makes four good ones! This one’s probably infected already, gotta seal it and not use anymore,” I looked at Maggie, “for the safety of your cattle.”

“How can you possibly know if it is infected?” Lori asked, arms crossed.

“How can we know it’s not? You taking any chances? I’m ain’t drinking it. Would you give Carl this water?”

I didn’t wait for her to answer because it was obvious. Nobody said anything else but I could see Shane’s annoyance and I knew maybe I was being too harsh, but whatever. They wanted to send Glenn down there, I mean, what the fuck? How were these people gonna survive? So I went to Glenn, grabbed him from behind under his armpits and all but dragged him out of the well entrance.

“Please, Glenn,” I said as I let go and he got to his feet. “Please, stop agreeing to anything people tell you to do. Do you realize what you were about to do?”

“Yeah…” he said lamely. “You right, I know you’re right.”

“And look,” I looked at the others, “I don’t give a shit if you think I’m being an ass about this, I just want us all to be alive. You don’t have to like it or me or whatever, just don’t send people down wells with walkers inside!”

I turned to go, but heard Theo say “But what do we do with –”

He stopped though because as he spoke Daryl aimed down the well and shot an arrow down, stopping the walker’s groans instantly. Then he turned away from them and joined me on the way out of the farm.

I was quiet for a while as we walked, Daryl leading the way just a step in front of me. I was so pissed I felt like screaming. Didn’t people have anything better to do? Set up camp, volunteer to go look for Sophia, help the Greenes with house chores, carry buckets of water from the other wells? I mean, I don’t know, anything but lowering a person down a well with a walker! Glenn could have died down there, didn’t they see it?

“Stop,” I heard Daryl’s voice cut my thoughts as he walked without looking at me.

“What?”

“You thinkin’ so hard it’s like you’re screamin.” I tried speaking but I ended up just groaning in anger and Daryl turned to me, stopping. “You done dealt with it, let it go. And Glenn’s a big boy, coulda’ve said no. Ya can’t control everything they do, you’ll go insane.”

“I know, you’re right…” and I started walking again, Daryl this time staying by my side. “I just wish they’d have some brains, you know... Common sense? It’s so obvious that they shouldn’t be doing that, I can’t understand – and I’m doing it again. Sorry, I’ll – you’re right, I’ll stop.”

“Good, ‘cause I gotta be tracking and you’re distracting me.”

Just then we abruptly left the woods, arriving at a large area with a big two-story house right there. We stopped in silence to watch, and finally, all the thoughts left my mind. It was completely silent, no signs of life or death. I removed my axe from a hoop on my belt as Daryl slid the crossbow from his shoulder, took an arrow from its holster and armed it. He walked in front of me, being the only one with a shooting weapon – I did have my two guns but wasn’t about to use them for just anything. We circled the house once, as silently as possible and stopped by the front door. He looked back at me quickly with a nod and then kicked it. It busted open with a loud noise and we still remained there, my axe in hand and up, waiting for any groan to come from a startled walker, but none came.

He entered the house then and I followed, staying in the hallway as he entered each room there, silently. I had to admire it. He was tall and strong but moved quietly and real light on his feet. And as he held the heavy crossbow up, his arms were tense and _damn_ , those arms.

We looked up a staircase but didn’t go up just yet. He entered the decrepit kitchen and the room beyond that as I stood by the door, eyeing the hall and the back door.

“Clear,” he told me in a low voice.

I turned to enter the kitchen as he was taking something from the trash and I approached. It was a can of sardine, still fresh. Somebody had been there recently, we both agreed with a look. This was a good sign. Daryl then looked beyond me and nudged me to get out of the way. Turning, I saw he was looking at a pantry door, so I stood behind. With his bow aimed, he opened the door carefully. It was empty save from some cans on the shelves.

He stood there observing it and I approached, crouching down to look at the pillow and blanket that had been left there. Touching it, I looked up at him.

“Could’ve been her.”

“Coulda been anybody, ain’t no way to tell”, he corrected me but paused. “But yeah, coulda been her.”

I got up and we left the kitchen, Daryl taking position in front of me again as we ascended the stairs. It creaked loudly midway up and we both froze for a moment, waiting for anything to happen, but there was no sound so we kept on up. The upper floor was also clear. It was a big house, I counted at least six bedrooms up there, many bathrooms, and it was not in such a bad shape as the ground floor. It was a good house. Before going down we looted a little, trying to find anything useful. I did find a pair of boots that were my size, but they were too worn out so I didn’t mind to take them. There were folded sheets and pillowcases in a wardrobe, which I put inside my still empty backpack. I kept looking and Daryl went downstairs again and after a moment I heard him shout Sophia’s name, just in case. I ended up taking a few hair ties, one half used toothpaste and a pack of pads for the other girls from the bathrooms, and a few abandoned pieces of clothing from the bedrooms.

When I went downstairs, I found him a bit away from the house, looking at a few wildflowers. They were quite pretty. I approached quietly and he explained why he was looking at them. He told me a story about a Cherokee tribe and the mothers with missing children, and how these flowers, the Cherokee Roses, were a sign of hope for them, as they bloomed from where the mother’s tears fell. I wondered how he knew such a beautiful story, but it didn’t matter because in the end, he surprised me even more as he said, “Reminded me of Carol.”

* * *

When we got back, Daryl and I went separate ways. I saw him entering the RV as I gave Theo my backpack, he said he’d sort the things and I was glad to see he looked so much better than the night before. Glenn was also back and he was smiling goofily. Weird, no run can go _so_ well you’ll smile like that. I crossed the grassy area and went to the house. In Carl’s room, I saw he was awake and talking softly to Rick as if very sleepy, but he had some color back and I felt a little weight being lifted from my heart.

He was really going to be okay, one of our two children was fine and that at least was something.

Rick followed me out, “Sam, can we speak for a moment?”

“Uh, sure…” I moved to sit on the porch steps and he sat by my side. “Everything okay?”

“It is,” he nodded emphatically. “Carl is fine, talking, he’ll fully recover. The group is fine as well, finally in a safe place…” he was gonna keep talking but I spoke over him.

“In what _looks_ like a safe place.”

“Look around, Sam,” he clearly disagreed and I looked to where his eyes were pointing. The group was by the trees, tents armed, Shane starting a fire, and I understood what he meant, it looked good. “This is a _good_ place, somewhere we can settle and make things work.”

“What are you talking about, Rick?”

He breathed before saying, “I asked Hershel to let us stay. Indefinitely.”

“You _did_.”

Oh, hold on, wait a minute, when the hell did he decide to do that?

“I did. He said no at first, but I insisted.”

“Why, Rick?

“Why?” he looked at me. “Because this is a good place!”

“He said no, and you insisted,” I affirmed to make him move on because I had so much to say about this that I preferred to wait.

“I did. He said that if we all follow his rules, he’ll think about it.”

“His no weapons rule?”

“Yes, but he did make it sound like there will be more rules. I told him we can do that.”

“We have to know all the rules before agreeing to them, Rick.”

“I say anything will be worth it if he lets us stay!”

“ _I say_ you need to think this through and that we shoulda talked about this before asking him!”

“And why is that, Sam?” he challenged. “You don’t think we could stay and make it good here?”

“Rick, just…” I tried to control my temper. “Think about it, okay, bear with me. When Carl was shot, we found the farm. Otis just pointed in the general direction and I ran. I was weak from hunger and heat, pregnant, didn’t know where it was, ran real fast for over two miles, had a cut and blood all over my eye. And yet, all I had to do was jump over the fence and come right to the porch. If I did it, anyone can do it. Dead or alive. Anybody can just climb over a fence and get to us, bite and kill us, or rob everything we have,” I paused and I saw his eyes wander away from me, thinking. “It ain’t safe. It’s good, but it ain’t _safe_ , and safety must be our priority.”

“We’ll have lookouts,” he said, still insisting.

“One person on top of the RV with a rifle will not work as a lookout for the entire property. It’s acres large, lots of fenced area that nobody will be looking at for the most part of the time. I’m being realistic here, Rick. It _is_ a good place, of course it is, there’s cattle, room to plant stuff, grow food, space for everyone, yeah, I can see that. But none of this will do any good is we can get invaded at any second.”

Rick looked away, to the group again, tried saying something, then huffed and lowered his head to his hands.

“I know you’re anxious to find a good place for your wife and son, I understand that. But that’s exactly why we all need to think things through before doing anything. Before asking Mr. Greene to let us just live here forever.”

“What is your plan, then?” he looked again at me and I could see he had understood my point because he was not so confrontational anymore.

“Not a plan yet, just ideas. Many ideas. What we need, Rick… Is _walls_.”

He paused, his head low and looking at me sideways, and he said, “Walls.” It wasn’t a question.

“ _Walls_. A gate and walls. Someplace we can close and secure and live inside,” I looked away, around the area. “Was talking to Daryl about it. Something like any abandoned condo, a hotel, a gated community, even a school would do, as long as any of those places have walls around it. With space for everyone, green areas where we can plant stuff because one day all the canned food will be gone. _That’s_ what I mean, Rick.”

He looked baffled. I’m sure he hadn’t thought that far in the future.

“And if Hershel says yes? We’ll just say thanks but no thanks and leave anyway?”

I said nothing for a while, thinking about it.

“If he says yes, we’ll stay. But we gotta plan and put some action into it as fast as possible. Find a way to fortify, set up an area, pro’ly not the entire farm, that we can build around. It’ll definitely make it not look as beautiful as it does now, but we’ll build walls. With, I don’t know… Tree trunks or bricks if we can find enough. Mr. Greene will have to agree to that as well.”

“And if we do stay… We’ll have to be under his rules… Indefinitely.”

I raised my eyebrows, a tight smile, my head tilting a little, “Do you see it now?”

He nodded, thoughtfully, and after a moment got up, a hand patting my knee briefly, “Thanks for the talk.”

Well, I was glad someone in the group was capable of fucking _listening_.

* * *

It was already dark when I noticed I hadn’t fixed my stuff yet, no tent, bags, folding bed, nothing. I didn’t assume for a moment I’d be crashing on Mr. Greene’s couch again. I was moving to the RV to get the tent when I saw an orange form from among a few trees, a bit away from the other tents. My own tent being the only bright orange one, it got my attention. Moving there, I reached an area still under the trees, but at least 90 feet away from everybody else’s, and sure enough, there was my tent ready and set right by Daryl’s pale blue one. I looked inside to see my foldable bed set and the sleeping bag on it, my personal bag on the floor and a box turned over to make up a little side table with an oil lamp on it. Where did this oil lamp come from?

Coming out of the tent, I saw Daryl approaching with firewood in his arms. He saw me then and let the wood fall to the ground.

“So this farm’s got magical properties or something that people’s tents get set on their own?”

“Yeah, also known as Dixon doin’ it for ya ‘cause you can’t set it up yourself,” and he crouched down to organize the wood he’d dropped.

“Hey, I could learn and do it myself!” and he made his pff sound again. “Why here away from the others?” I finally asked.

“Did you see me campin’ close to the others at the quarry?”

“No… But that was before,” and I sat down on the tarp he’s set under my tent, the end of it making a small area right in front of it. “Now you know’em better, it’s been a while.”

“Ain’t like I got friends with nobody,” he stopped, resting an arm over his bent knee. “You wanna move your over there, be my guest, I’m stayin’.”

“Nah… Been socializing too much for my likes. Can use some peace.”

He looked at me but said nothing, turning quickly to start a fire with his lighter and we were silent for a while. I kept looking at him and he didn’t seem to notice, and I caught myself once again admiring his form. Damn those arms. I didn’t know what was happening.

Alright, fine! I did know. I was very much, really, very much attracted to him. How could I not be, he was gorgeous! It’d be better if he was a bit cleaner, sure, but you can’t have it all during the apocalypse. And damn, did he have to cut off the sleeves of every damn shirt he owned? He was doing it on purpose, I bet.

Sure it was physical. I’d been alone for nearly three months; the last person I’d been with was a one-night stand that knocked me up. Before the world ended I was never alone for too long. Relationships, no, but having fun with guys I found attractive? Hell yeah. I’ve no shame in saying that, I was a free woman, owed nothing to no one, sexually active and _damn_ , now I was thinking about sex. And I missed it. I missed it a lot.

But was it just attraction? Or was it simply _Daryl_? The way he and I had gotten close, how well we worked together, how I knew I could count on him for whatever I needed? He had my back, I could dare to call him a _partner_. He was a rough man, rude plenty of times, but was gentle in the way he cared about me. And it was not just that, it was how much I admired him. Smart without being arrogant, talented and built for this new world, and he cared about the people around him even though he’d never say so. The way he was worried about Sophia and cared so much about finding her, about her mother. He was a good man, Daryl was, and I was sure it was all that, plus the obvious attraction, that got me having all those feelings for him.

Maybe I was ready to admit to myself that I had feelings for Daryl.

He’d been staring at me for many seconds when I caught myself. I laughed a little, ore like a giggle, so fucking awkwardly, and looked away, reaching to untie my boots just to have something other than him to look at.

“What was that?” he asked and I noticed there was already a small fire going on next to him.

“What? Nothing!” I answered too quickly.

“Was you thinkin’ ‘bout the well and Glenn again?” he turned to poke at the fire to make it warmer.

It was my turn to pfff, “Last person I was thinkin’ about was Glenn.”

He looked at me, the arm resting on his knee as he crouched all tensed up and damn, I looked away quickly again, pulling the first boot off. “Was ‘bout a person then.”

Did he sound… Bothered? Maybe the thought I was thinking about any other person, not him, and it bothered him… Well, wasn’t that interesting?

“No, I was just –” _Think faster, Sam!_ “I was thinkin’ about the things I miss,” _meh, nearly a good one._ “From before.”

I removed the other boot and wiggled my toes inside my socks.

“And what is that?”

He decided the fire was good enough for now and kind of dragged himself over to the tarp without getting up, dropping by my side but not too close. Ok, now I had to think about the things I missed.

I missed sex.

“Well…” I removed one sock. “My routine was just… It sucked. Was wake up before the sun, two buses to go work at the diner, have lunch, another bus to the other diner in the afternoon, another bus to school at night, study all those crap what I’d have no use to but I needed because I wanted to finish high school, and then two buses to go back home late at night… Getting often harassed when I got there… Only to start it all over again the next day.”

He hummed, “Miss _that_?”

I laughed, “No fuckin’ way! In his area, the end of the world was not so bad. I was thinking ‘bout the weekends,” I said as I massaged my own foot, leg bent to rest it on top of my other thigh. “I still had work at least one of the diners in the mornings, so I’d wake up early and take all the buses just the same, but after I left… There was this group of people, it was something kinda unofficial, we’d just meet at a park, you know Wells Park?” he nodded. “And we’d stay there or go somewhere else so we’d practice parkour. We’d be at it for hours… One of the guys was a gym teacher at a local school, so he helped us all with the stretches and other stuff to stay in shape. It was…” I paused thinking of it for a moment. “Lifted all the weight I carried with me all week from my shoulders.”

He nodded and was quiet for a moment, thoughtful, looking at the fire. Around us, night had fallen and the rest of the group was gathered in camping chairs around their own fire and crickets and cicadas were singing loudly. It was peaceful.

“You can still do that,” he said quietly after a moment and I removed the sock from my other foot. “Do this… Thing you did. Plenty of space.”

“I could. But one important thing to parkour is that ya can’t be afraid. Careful, yeah, but not afraid. Fear will hold you back in moments you just can’t hold back.”

“You afraid?” he looked at me.

I nodded slowly and in silence for a moment before answering, “I guess… Yeah. There’s a child in here now. It’s all different.”

He gave me that slow nod again, his teeth biting on his lower lip and he eyed me massaging my foot, “Suppose it is.”

Extending a hand to point at my foot, Daryl gestured me to let him take it. I was utterly confused, but he just insisted wordlessly. Baffled, I turned on my place to face him as he did the same, sitting with his right leg bent over the tarp and the other extended out, and we sat facing each other. I rested my left barefoot on his crossed leg and he placed his hands on it, warm and strong, and started doing the same massage I’d been doing.

Damn, I was so fucked. No returning after the point the guy you like massages your foot. Done. Done and over with.

I said nothing, just groaned, because his massage was so much better than my own, and he pressed his thumbs strongly on the arch. At my long, low groan he looked up from my foot to me and that little, enticing sideways smile came up again.

Fuck, the man was killing me.

“Will ya cut the crap now and tell me what you was really thinkin’ about?”

I opened my eyes to look at him. When had I closed my eyes?

“What?”

“You don’ wanna share, you don’ gotta,” and he looked at my foot again as he started pressing on my toes and I’m sure my eyes rolled to the back of my head. I leaned back, resting my weight on my arms behind me. “But you wasn’t thinking ‘bout no parkour.”

Baffled. Fucking baffled.

I smiled with my eyebrows frowned in disbelief, “How can you _possibly_ know that?”

“You don’ think I know ya?”

I stuttered a bit, making a pfff among the meaningless sounds and was finally able to formulate “To the point you know what I was _thinking_?!”

“I don’ know what you was thinkin’, just what you wasn’t.”

He motioned me to place the other foot there as well and put one hand on each, his thumbs pressing and sliding against both soles. I didn’t groan this time: I moaned. I fucking moaned and let myself fall back, lying on the tarp, an arm pillowing my head. He paused for a moment, just holding my foot and I looked at him. He seemed a bit confused.

“Don’t stop…” I asked and it was clear how sexual the whole thing sounded. He moved his hands again, still looking at me. “Okay,” I conceded. I couldn’t believe I was gonna tell him that. “As much as I do miss parkour, you’re right, it ain’t what I was thinkin’ of…” I looked up at the sky visible among the tree leaves above us. “When I quit the drugs and drinking I did it on my own. There were no clinics, no treatments… No people around supporting me. It was all me… So I pro’ly didn’t do it right. Didn’t… Not in the healthiest way, I’m sure. But it worked, went through withdrawals and all, and after they passed I… Managed. But what I did was, I kinda… Substituted one urge for another,” his hands were now on top of my feet, massaging the area it met my leg. “And this other urge is what I miss. These days way much more than drinking. It’s what I was thinking about.”

Please don’t ask me what it is. Please don’t ask me what it is.

“What is it?”

Damn.

I looked back at him and stared for a moment, saying nothing, our eyes locked and his hands still moving on my skin.

Oh, how I wanted to jump him.

“What is _your_ addiction, Daryl?” I asked instead.

The side smile was back as he slowly shook his head, “Liked weed a lot. Kinda miss it. What’s yours?”

Fuck it, I was just gonna say it. Let it in the open, just… Tell him. The way he was pressing on my feet and looking down at me, there was no way he’d be bothered by me telling him that. He’d like it, wouldn’t he? He’d like knowing what I was thinking before as I stared at him was _sex_.

But there was movement somewhere behind our tents and it startled us. I sat up, looking back, my feet withdrawing from his hands. Daryl straightened his back and a hand rested on the knife on his belt. After a moment we recognized Lori sneaking away from the camp, going alone to the meadow and disappearing from sight.

Moment was gone.

I looked back at him and he seemed to be coming out of hypnosis or something, a bit confused. We locked eyes and looked away quickly. I’m sure he knew what I’d been talking about, or it wouldn’t be this awkward now the moment had passed.

“I’d better go to sleep,” he said as he pushed himself up. “Got lookout in a couple of hours.”

“Yeah, sure,” I tried to sound nonchalant as he approached the entrance of his tent. “G’night.”

“Night,” he replied quickly and zipped himself inside.

That night I covered my mouth with a hand to muffle any sound as I tried to mimic the feeling. Nearly worked, but it wasn’t nearly as good as the real thing, not even close to what I thought it’d be with Daryl. But at least it got me to sleep.


	24. Day 69, part 1

Morning sickness hit me like a motherfucker from the moment I woke up. I was throwing up from the moment I left the tent, the sun only starting to pale the sky. I drank some water and laid down again, but was able to nap for just a few minutes when I had to do it all over again. Only when I was able to drink water without wasting it I left our tent area and approached the others. Carol was up and about for what looked like a while because she was already hanging washed clothes on a line we had extended yesterday.

“Morning,” she said to me. “How are you feeling?”

“Uh… You saw that.”

“Heard you. How far along are you now?

“Thirteen, fourteen weeks by now, I guess,” I told her as I sat in a log near her.

“Oh, that’s about the end of your first trimester,” she smiled at me. “Morning sickness will be over very soon, you’ll see.”

“I hope so… There’s too much to do, can’t be getting sick all the time.”

“You need to eat something. Mr. Greene was saying yesterday that they’d give us some milk from their cows. You could use the calcium.”

I just nodded, the idea of eating a bowlful of milk with a very sugary cereal very appealing to me, too bad we didn’t have any very sugary cereal.

“Speaking of it, I had an idea,” Carol said after my pause. “That big kitchen of theirs got me thinking. I wouldn’t mind cooking in a real kitchen again. Maybe we’ll pitch in and cook diner for Hershel and his family tonight.”

“I wouldn’t mind having a real dinner either… Oh, a thick, warm homemade soup would be soooo nice right now.”

Carol smiled at me, “And there are the cravings.”

“Pfff, these days, to get cravings? I’m so fucked…”

“Hey, it will be fine. We’ll all do our best.”

“Thanks…” I said weakly. “I like the dinner idea. They’ve just lost someone, it’s just something people do, right? And they’re doing so much for us…”

“You mind extending the invitation?”

“Sure… Tonight, you think?”

“Yes, if they agree. I need to keep doing something… Keep my mind occupied.”

“I get it,” I got up from the log. “You do that and let us keep looking,” I stood near her. “I ain’t feeling well enough to go out there with the others today, but I’ll help’em organize the search. We ain’t giving up, and Daryl sure as hell ain’t giving up. You can count on that.”

Carol gave me a tight-lipped, watery smile, “Thank you, Sam.”

Lori approached just then, as I was ready to leave, “I can’t believe I slept in,” she was saying.

“You must have needed it,” Carol answered, returning to her laundry.

“All the scare,” I said already taking a step to leave them. “You were exhausted, I bet. We all deserve some occasional rest.”

I did turn to go but Lori called me back, “Uh, Sam? Can I talk to you?”

She sounded a bit nervous and it didn’t feel like she had just woken up, so I knew it had to be something important.

“Sure. Can it wait a bit, though? I need to get today’s search going with the men, but I ain’t going with them, then we can talk.”

She nodded with a little smile that didn’t reach her eyes and it got me apprehensive. I thought it probably would have something to do with the talk I’d had with her husband yesterday, about staying here or not. But I’d know later.

To the side of the tent area, a few of the men and Andrea were gathered around the same car again, waiting for something, so I marched over there.

“Morning all,” I got to them saying. Daryl was there and I forced myself not to smile too largely at him. He greeted me with a nod and then unfolded the map that was there on the hood of the car. We all stayed there for a while, looking at the map, defining groups and search areas.

“That mean you ain’t going?” Daryl asked me.

“Not a good day for me. Morning sickness came to bite me in the ass just when I thought it was gone. I’d be stalling you stopping to hurl every five minutes. Gotta go do just that in a moment.”

He looked worried at me for another long moment, but we didn’t keep talking because that boy who’d been around the farm with the Greene’s since we arrived, Jimmy, I recognized him as Beth’s boyfriend, approached saying he wanted to help. Great, something happens to him it’s two people on our account.

Shane arrived then with his attitude, shirt open showing pecks. Nice pecks like those in a guy like Shane did nothing for me though.

“Nothing about what you two found screams Sophia to me. Anyone could be holed up in that farmhouse.”

‘Anyone includes her, right?” Andrea rebated.

“Whoever slept in the cupboard was no bigger than yay-high,” Daryl sad gesturing the size of a small person.

“It _was_ a tiny space,” I confirmed. “It’s a good lead, and by now the only one we got.”

“Maybe we’ll pick up her trail again,” Rick agreed with us.

“No maybe ‘bout it,” Daryl said leaving no room for questions. “Imma borrow a horse, head to this ridge right here,” he said pointing an area at the map, “take a bird’s eye view of the whole grid. She’s up there, I’ll spot’er.”

“Good idea,” Theo said and I knew he was mocking. Seriously, mocking the plan of the one person in the group could actually find Sophia? “Maybe you’ll your chupacabra up there too.”

Oh, here we go. I knew one day this was going to be mentioned again. Dale explained to Rick’s question of what Theo meant. Apparently on our first night as a group, still at the road before the quarry, when a group of all of us women were chatting, the men had done the same and Daryl had told a story about one day when he was out hunting he’d seen something and was sure it’d been a chupacabra. When he told me that I didn’t disbelieve, I mean, I never believe in many things that were true to us all these days.

Jimmy laughed at it and became the recipient of Daryl’s annoyance, “What you braying at, jackass?”

“You believe in a blood-sucking dog?” Rick also didn’t have it.

“You believe in dead people walking around?” Daryl asked and Rick had no answer for that.

After that Jimmy wanted a gun, didn’t have it, the whole old story. He ended up being put in a team with Andrea and Theo, since they were the one who’d come back sooner to the farm because Theo wasn’t still fully recovered from all his blood loss. I put Rick and Shane together and Daryl was going alone. He didn’t need back-up.

I should have sent someone with him.

But he’d never agree anyway.

* * *

As I left the house, where I had gone to use the bathroom and ended up throwing up again, I found Glenn on the porch, looking out thoughtfully as he fingered the guitar Dale had found on the road. I was going to sit we him to chat a little, but Lori was at the tents looking pointedly at me. So I just smiled at Glenn and made my way to her. Lori, seeing me coming, walked away from the tents, going a bit further into the trees and I found her sitting on a log, holding her hands together between her knees.

“What happened?” I asked noticing her nervousness.

“I need to talk to you.”

“Are you okay?” I asked as I sat by her side, facing her and touching her arm.

“I’m pregnant.”

Blank. Nothing came to my mind to say.

“You - what?” was what I was able to stutter out.

“I – I’m pregnant. Too.”

I just let my mouth hang open. Pregnant.

 _Fuck_.

“Oh-kay…” I managed. “That’s uh…” Ok, Sam, stop faking, Lori’s a grown woman. “Well, fuck.”

“Yeah,” she agreed, looking away. “Fuck.”

I blew air out, my cheeks ballooning up for a moment. “How can you be sure?”

“Glenn brought me a test from their pharmacy run yesterday. I asked him not to tell anybody.”

“Ok… Does Rick know?”

“Haven’t told him yet. I don’t know how he’ll react.”

“Well, Rick’s great with Carl, I don’t think he’ll have a problem with a second –”

“Sam,” she said simply and I looked at her. She was giving me a meaningful look that I took a moment to understand.

Oh.

Rick had only been back with her, from his coma, for like a week. It was a real, very, very long week where so much had happened, that it felt like it’d been months, but that was it. Seven, eight days.

The baby wasn’t Rick’s.

“Oh.”

“I did the math; you did the math. He will too.”

We were silent for another moment, my mind going overdrive again. Two pregnant women. We needed a plan. I needed to make decisions, set up a plan, there was so much to be done in the months before our babies were born.

“Only six months to go before mine,” I said. “Eight or so for yours, you think?”

“Yes, sounds about right. It’s not a lot of time,” and she lowered her elbows to her knees, hiding her face with a huff. “I can’t believe this happened…”

“Hey, it’s okay,” I told her recognizing the first desperation signs I’d had myself. I didn’t want her to go through them as well. “You ain’t gonna be alone in this,” I placed a hand on her shoulders making her look sideways at me, her head resting in a hand. “None of us are. It’s why we have a group for, so nothing gotta be faced alone. Especially this.”

She kept looking at me for a moment, shaking her head and then gave me a little smile, “I find it incredible how positive you manage to keep eve when facing all of this.”

“Being negative won’t make me survive. Desperation won’t find my baby a safe place to be born and grow up in.”

“You’re right. I know that, but right now, I’m just – I…” she huffed again.

“I know how you feel. Been there not long ago.”

"Can I ask you something?”

"Sure."

"Your baby... Is it _really_ not Daryl's?"

I laughed, looking away from Lori no my own boots. "No... It really ain't his."

"Well... He sure acts like it is, always protective over you… Setting your tent with his away from the others," and then she looked at me sideways, lowering her head to find my eyes and give me another meaningful look, “Giving you foot rubs.”

“Oh, uh…” I paused to laugh nervously. Was I blushing? I think I was blushing, dammit. “You saw that.”

“Yeah, I did see that… I was going to take my test far from the others and there you were, lying down getting your feet rubbed!”, she was smiling widely now.

"Yeah, it's just... That's just Daryl. He's really protective. You see how he's with Sophia."

"Hm, true. But there's something there, isn't it?"

"Me and Daryl?" I asked just to stall the answer because her question had been really obvious.

"Yes, he doesn't talk much with anyone else, except maybe Carol now with the Sophia thing – but even then not as much as with you. You two are always around each other."

"We are. Yeah, but… It's not like that... Or at least... I mean, we grew up nearby, never had much contact but we were always seeing each other around, but what got us close was... Well... Something happened right before the outbreak."

"Between you two?"

I laughed, "Not that! I mean... Well, two guys Daryl and Merle knew broke into my house to attack me."

Her expression changed immediately "Oh, God."

"Yeah, and I fought them, and then Daryl and Merle came into my house to help me, they'd heard the fight. They protected me just because I'd been their neighbor, not even a friend. And that night was the first time we saw people turning into walkers, you know, so I think it brought us close together."

"How did they turn? Were they bit?"

"Well, if it's by being bit that people turn, the first guy probably had been bitten before, I don't know. Because after he died there in my living room, he got up and bit his friend."

Lori shook her head, her eyes wide, "I have so many questions! You... killed the guy?"

Oh, the sound of judgment. I looked at Lori dead in the eye and told her with no hesitation in my voice, "He was on top of me trying to lower my pants with his other hand around my neck," I paused. "What'd you think I should've done?"

Lori swallowed hard in silence and nodded after a moment. "I see... You're right. As hard as it is to admit, I'd probably do the same."

"A sense of self-preservation kicks in, Lori. I didn't even plan to push that knife into his neck. All I know is that I was _not_ raped that night."

Lori nodded again and looked down, her understanding it hitting her, "So he then turned."

"Yeah, it was the first one we saw. He just got up, attacked his friend and then he turned too, and it was all a mess."

"I see... Those things have the power to bring people together or just do them apart for good."

"Well, it did this group together. And we'll stay like this," I reached for Lori's hand. "You and I are bringing new people to the world, people who will help us still have a future even with all that happening. Seems the world hasn’t ended after all!"

Lori smiled tightly at me and squeezed my hand back, shaking it a bit, "Thank you, Sam."

"Nothing to thank me for."

"Yeah, I do. We all do and you know it."

I let go of her hand looking away, "Oh, come on..."

"At least let me thank you for being so supportive to me?" I looked again at Lori, “And even more for not judging me.”

I was genuinely confused about the last bit and asked: “Why would I judge you?”

“Well, for… Being pregnant when my - my husband wasn’t around.”

Oh, that.

“Lori, listen to me. You won’t let anybody judge you for that. I’ll easily defy anyone who does. I know you and I haven’t agreed on everything since the beginning, but it don’t matter. I’ll be on your side on this one. You thought your husband was dead, you were scared, alone, and you found comfort in someone you trusted. There is nothing wrong with that. I personally don’t like Shane a lot and everybody knows that, but he was the person you trusted the most then, who had your back, who was taking care of you and your son. And dammit, you were a fuckin’ widow for all you knew, so you didn’t cheat on anyone. Please, don’t feel guilty about this, it ain’t your fault.”

She had tears in her eyes as I spoke and her hand was gripping mine strongly. She said “Oh, dammit, come here,” before pulling me to a tight hug.

* * *

Andrea, Theo, and Jimmy were back. Rick and Shane were back – and man, you could cut the air around them with a knife. Something bad had happened, they were throwing each other dirty looks and staying apart. I got really worried for Lori because it had seemed to me Shane might have told Rick about their short-lived relationship, but when I saw Rick talking normally to Lori I knew it had to be something else.

So they were all back from the search, with no news whatsoever… All, except for Daryl. He’d been gone for hours now and we were in the late afternoon already, the sun approaching the horizon. He had to be back by now.

“One of my horses is missing,” was what Mr. Greene used to open the conversation as he approached me by the stalls.

“Missing?”

“Yes, unaccounted for. Do you happen to know anything about this?”

“Yes, I actually do, but I thought you knew. Daryl went out to search on a horse today, I thought he’d spoken to you first.”

“He did not,” he said firmly.

 _Damn, Daryl_. “I’m sorry about that, I’ll talk to him.”

“And Jimmy? You sent him out with your group today. Did he also give you the impression of my consent?”

“He did. I asked him if you were fine with it and he said you allowed it and only had to speak to me.”

“Jimmy is seventeen.”

“Seventeen-year-old people can already understand the concept of a lie, Mr. Greene.”

“He’s a minor, and he’s not my kin, but he’s my responsibility. These things need to be cleared with me.”

I nodded, quiet. He was right. I didn’t think Jimmy shouldn’t be held accountable for his lie – goddammit what if something had happened to him out there? But Mr. Greene was right.

“I’ll talk to my group,” I told him. “I’ll watch over them and any decision we have to make, I’ll run by you first.

“I’d appreciate that, Sam. You control your people, I control mine.”

Control my people... You’d think with a bunch of adults who had whole lives before, responsibilities, you could count on their own common sense, but he was right. They needed leadership or they’d just keep sending people down wells.

The women were inside the house preparing dinner, all except for me and Andrea. I was pacing, trying to find something to do, considering going to cook with them inside, but I couldn’t. I was worried when I shouldn’t be. I mean, it was Daryl, the was tough, be knew what he was doing, he was fine and would be hell of annoyed if he knew I’d been worrying that much.

And then Andrea distracted me from the worries when she climbed up the RV and took Dale’s rifle and stood in watch. I didn’t know Shane had placed her in watch… He’d specifically gotten approval for a gun on-site if it was for Dale to lookout, and now there she was, all pose.

“What’s with the Annie Oakley routine?” Dale beat me to ask, looking up at her.

“I don’t wanna wash clothes anymore, Dale,” she said looking down at him and then saw me there too, “I wanna help keep the camp safe”, and then used a defying tone, passive-aggressiveness all over her voice, “is that alright with you?”

“I ain’t the one you should run this by, Andrea, you know that. Ask Shane before just picking up a gun and taking over. You didn’t even get much training anyway!”

She rolled her eyes, not even bothering to hide how annoyed she was by my leading. God, I really, really disliked her. I turned around to go talk to Shane, because she hadn’t moved a muscle to go do as I said, when she called out.

“Walker! Walker!”

I turned to look at where she was pointing, squinting and making a shade over my eyes, and there it was, a walker had just left the trees and was walking towards the camp. Rick, Shane, Theo, everyone who was around came running, ready.

“It’s just one,” I informed them as they approached me.

“I bet I can nail it from here!” Andrea said picking up the rifle she’d let go to use the binoculars.

“No!” I shouted. “Put the gun down, Andrea, shooting is our last resource, and we’ve all told you many times.”

“We’ll handle this,” Shane told us all and he, Rick and Theo took off in the walker’s direction. Three men for one walker? They had it. I didn’t even bother to go there. I really wasn’t worried.

“Andrea, don’t!” I heard Dale say and looked up at the RV to see Andrea lying down, taking aim.

“Back off, Dale,” she told him and armed the rifle.

“The fuck you think you’re doing, Andrea?” I asked up at her. “They have it!” she didn’t move. “Andrea, I’m talking to you! Do not shoot! The noise will attract more walkers and you’ll just waste a bullet!”

The sound of her shot deafened me for a second, made Dale and I flinch. I wasn’t expecting t, I really thought she was going to stop and not shoot, all angry and whatever, but she just fucking did it anyway. She laughed in joy when she hit the target, the walker falling to the ground.

“God fuckin’ dammit, Andrea!” I shouted, but mine were not the only shouts. Rick was yelling “No!” from a distance and Andrea was getting up on the RV, looking worried.

“Andrea, please don’t tell me you hit one of them!”

“Oh no,” she was saying. “No, no, no!”

She’d hit someone. I was sure she had and my stomach went cold and my right wrist and my palm ached like a bitch. I took off in their direction, the sun blinding me, Andrea and Dale quickly catching up. This time I wouldn’t hold myself, I’d bitch slap her in the face.

But everything around me froze and went silent from a second to another. I stopped, they kept on running. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t breathe. It was like I was underwater with no air and the sounds muffled. It was Daryl, being carried by Rick and Shane, limp, lifeless, bloodied from head to toe. I heard nothing, Rick said something to me as they passed but I didn’t register, just turned to follow them with my eyes as they took Daryl to the house.

Someone dragged me away, I think it was Glenn, gently making me walk because I was still frozen. They had entered the house minutes ago now and I was still there. The only things that unfroze me was the sight of Andrea and Dale sitting on the porch steps.

“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Dale was telling her. “At some point, we’ve all wanted to shoot Daryl.”

I felt my blood boil, saw red as people say, as I marched up to them. They saw me arriving and got startled. I stopped in front of Andrea and leaned town to level with her.

“You listen to me, Andrea,” she had her eyes wide, frozen looking at me. “Daryl dies; I will kill you. I. Will. Fucking. Kill you,” I paused for effect. “This conversation ain’t over, do you hear me?” and I turned to look at Dale. “Have we all wanted to shoot Daryl? For what? Hunting and bringing back meat to feed us all this time? Teaching everyone how to deal with walkers? Getting himself in danger to look for Sophia?” I straightened my back and looked down from one to another, they stunned faces thrilling me. “Daryl’s more useful to this group than the two of you combined.”

At that I stormed up the steps between them and entered the house. The women in the kitchen were still cooking but looked startled at me across the dining room, looking worried, especially Carol. I said nothing and ran up the stairs. I needed to see him, know if he was alive, if Andrea’s aim had been that good and what the hell had all that blood on his shirt and on his chin been. Was he bit? I was praying for a God I wasn’t even sure I believed in that he wasn't bitten.

Rick was outside a closed door and saw me approach, and took quick steps to meet me halfway.

“He’s fine,” was what he immediately said at my probably desperate expression. I didn’t really register it well, though. “It was just a graze; it didn’t really hit him. Sam?” he said to make me look at him because I’d been trying to look at the closed door over his shoulder. I looked up at him, “Daryl’s fine. He’s not dead, not bit. He’s hurt, but he’ll be fine.”

Oh. Good. Great, good to hear. But I had to see him.

“Where’s he now?”

“Hershel’s insisted he got cleaned up before stitching him. Was not an easy argument,” he attempted a joke to lighten the mood. “When he’s washed up he’ll get stitches to his side and his head, and he’ll be as good as new.”

I must have visibly relaxed because Rick let go of my arms, also looking calmer. I hadn’t even noticed he’d been holding me by the upper arms.

“Ok,” I said. “Good. Ok, that – that’s good.”

I stayed on the hallway with Rick, quiet for a while, still pacing from one end of it to another for a while until the bathroom door was opened. Hershel came out helping Daryl walk. He was wearing clean pants and no shirt and was guided across the hall to a bedroom. I don’t think he saw me there, Rick entered right after them and I got to the door, hovering there for a moment. Hershel motioned Daryl to lay on his side so he wouldn’t press on the wound and put a clean cloth in his hand telling him to pressure the head wound. But he was fine. Breathing, talking, complaining, saying something about a doll. Shane passed by me then, all but ignoring my presence, carrying the same rolled-up map we’d been using to plan the searches, and he and Rick started asking Daryl questions about the location, where he’d found it, and Daryl explained it all as if there was no needle being poked into his skin as he talked. Lori came then, standing by me wordlessly. Hershel said something about the missing horse as well, but I didn’t care, not at all. As he left the room, he stopped to look at me at the threshold and said, “it’s a wonder you people have survived this long.”

I said nothing but noticed Daryl looked at me then, I think only now noticing I’d been there. I gave room for Hershel to leave and took a step into the room as Shane got up from his chair and left the room. Lori followed him to say something, both of them stopping on the same hallway but a bit ahead of he with hushed voices. Rick was still in there, I could hear him and Daryl still talking. I had no idea what to do. I wanted to go in and tell Rick to get the hell out so I could be alone with Daryl, but at the same time, what would I say? If I said anything right now I’d demonstrate all I was feeling, how terrified I was of losing him, how much it had hurt to think he was dead, how lost I’d be without him, that I didn’t want to do any of this surviving thing if he wasn’t there by my side.

I turned to leave, overwhelmed with my own conclusion.

I was in love with Daryl.


	25. Day 69, part 2

Dinner was half amazing because the food was wonderful, half terrible because the silence was so tense and awkward I wanted to get up and run away from it. Terrible. Glenn tired, poor guy, to come up with something to talk about but somehow only made it worse. Really, terrible.

Even worse, I ended up sitting right across the table form Andrea.

I didn’t move my eyes from my food for a second, because if I did I’d throw myself over the table to punch her.

After eating, people thanked for the food and started leaving to go back to their tents or upstairs to their rooms as Maggie, Beth, and Lori went to the kitchen again to do the dishes. Carol had a tray with food and juice and went upstairs to bring it to Daryl. He was probably starving. I went up a bit after her and got to the hall as she was leaving, closing the door behind her.

“Hey,” she whispered, standing with me. “Please see that he eats, he sure needs it.” I nodded with a little smile at her. “What he did for my baby today… I have no words,” and she took a step to leave, but stopped to touch my arm. “It’s a good man you got there.”

Oh, how right she was… I watched Carol leave quietly and faced his door, taking a deep breath. I had no idea what I’d say or do, if I’d act on my feelings, if I’d call him out for losing the horse and getting hurt to that extent, I had no idea. But I had to be in there now.

Daryl looked over his shoulder at the door as it creaked open, and kept looking as I entered and closed it behind me. I was nervous as I stared at him, saying nothing, my eyes fixing on the bandage on his head and lower, to his back that was turned to me. There was a tattoo there I didn’t know he had, and scars. Many of them. Long, deep scars that looked old. They’d been there for a long time, probably a childhood thing.

 _Fuck_.

I let it pass, for now, my eyes traveling now to the other bandage on his side. He turned back to his position, looking away and trying to bring the sheets higher over him, to hide, but in a moment looked over his shoulder again, at me. He seemed confused by my silence. The bedroom was dim and he didn’t say a word and try as I might, I couldn’t find anything to say. There was a huge lump on my throat, it had been there since the shot, and it hurt.

Forcing myself to move, I let go of my own hands and crossed the bedroom, rounding the bed to stand opposite Daryl. He followed me with his eyes, turning, still saying nothing. I hesitated for a moment before turning around and sitting on the bed with my back to him and reaching down to untie my boots and kick them off. Without thinking too much of it, I scooched up on the bed, turning to my side and lying down facing Daryl, an arm moving under the pillow I rested my head on, and the other curling around myself, hand resting over my lips.

He stared at me suspiciously, eyes a bit wide, but still said nothing, his hand gripping the sheet high on his chest, but still leaving the bandage on his side visible. We kept like this for a while, lying down facing each other, quiet. My eyes still wandered all around him, his face, both bandages and even his chest moving as he breathed because I just needed to see him, know he was there and alive and it had all been just a scare.

“You –” Daryl started after a while and stopped to clear his throat, licking his lips before speaking again. “You stayin’?”

I nodded with my head on the pillow, eyes on his. “Yeah. Not ready to have you out of my sight.”

His eyebrows moved a bit down at that, “I’m fine.”

“Yeah, I know… But you could not be.”

“Was just a grazin’ –”

“– you could’ve died, Daryl,” I said firmly over him, my eyes suddenly filled with tears. “I could be mourning you know instead of lying here looking at you!” At these words, my voice caught I closed my eyes tightly making the tears spill, running over the bridge of my nose. “Fuckin’ hormones,” I muttered as I angrily dried my eyes.

He said nothing, stunned. Hormones my ass. There were no excuses for those tears except the truth, that I dreaded the idea of losing him. He watched me dry my eyes and sniff and look at him again, and I wandered all over his face how. So Daryl cleared his throat again and spoke of something other than my tears.

“Still don’t know for real what happened.”

“You know you were shot in the head, right?”

My change of tone was apparently something Daryl could work with because he relaxed a little.

“Gathered that much.”

“It was Andrea! Daryl. Andrea shot you in the fuckin’ head!”

“What the fuck?”

“Yeah, she thought you was a walker. The way you arrived on the field… But I told her not to. Rick and Shane were close to you, they’d take care of it if it was a walker, and I was right there and I told her not to shoot ‘cause she didn’t need to, that Rick and Shane were there and she’d waste a bullet and the noise is dangerous, I fuckin’ told her and she just motherfuckin’ did it anyway!”

I finished turning abruptly on my back, the mattress shaking strongly, and growling loudly as I covered my face with my hands.

“It can’t go unpunished!” I let go of my face, angrily staring at the ceiling, gesturing with my hands. “She shot someone, one of ours, she could have killed you! I gotta do something, I wanna ban her. I wanna punch her in that fucking face of hers and then ban her from this group!”

“Hey, you gotta stop!” Daryl reached for my left upper arm, making me stop and look at him, breathing hard as if I’d run a marathon. “We’ll deal with her later, just stop.”

“But Daryl –”

“I’m okay, Sam,” he spoke calmly and in a low voice, calmer than he probably felt because he’d just found out who had shot him. “Ya told me not to die, remember?”

I quieted at that and turned again to my side, facing him, one arm once again moving under the pillow and the other now resting on the mattress between us. Sniffing, I closed my eyes briefly and looked at him again. “Yeah. I did.”

“I heard ya.”

Pressing my lips together, I felt my eyes fill up again, and I nodded. “What of this?” I diverged the subject pointing at his side.

He lifted his arm from the mattress and looked quickly at his wound and then back at me, his hand resting close to mine. “Fell from the horse. Rolled down a slope and fell down a waterfall, landed on an arrow that went right through here. May have hit my head as well ‘cause then I was all hallucinatin’’ of Merle talking ta me.”

My eyebrows were up. “Holly fuck, Daryl. And _then_ got shot in the head!”

He smirked sideways, just lightly, “And then got shot in the head.”

“Merle must have said all kindsa shit to you.”

“You know him, even jus’ in my head.”

“Yeah…” I breathed out hard, my cheeks ballooning up for a moment and we went silent again. I turned a bit, trying to get more comfortable, nearly on my stomach, getting even closer to Daryl, but didn’t stay in this position for a second, returning to my side but turning just a little further, my bump up.

“Damn,” I muttered placing a hand on it, “if I lie on my stomach, I can feel the bump… ‘S weird, like Imma crush the baby. Pro’ly won't but feels weird.”

I looked at Daryl and found his eyes glued on my small bump, a little of it showing under the shirt that got lifted a bit with all my moving. I let him look, my own hand feeling it, for a long moment, until he blinked, cleared his throat and looked at me.

“You showin’… Didn’t know you was showing.”

“Well, barely… But I am,” and I lifted the shirt a bit further, the whole little bump out now. “’S kinda bizarre… Little person growing inside me.”

“Do you – Do you feel it already? Move, I mean?”

“Nah… Too soon I think. But I do feel like… Kinda something. Like there’s a butterfly batting the wings in there. Or like, you know when we got that eye twitch, the muscle movin’ on its own?” I asked smiling and he nodded. “Like that, inside. Was feeling it when I laid here.”

There was silence again and I felt like I could breathe again, lying there so close to a living, breathing Daryl, his eyes alive and attentive on me, the heat from this body radiating to me. It felt safe, it felt right, and I could close my eyes and breathe out slowly, a little smile playing on my lips. I knew he was watching me and it felt comfortable. When I opened my eyes, I caught his own traveling from my bump to my hand on it and up my arms, studying me from my forearm sunflower tattoos to the colorful mandala on my upper arm, the little green chameleon on my shoulder and the black and grey butterfly low on the side of my neck. And then he met my eyes, catching me watching him.

He didn’t look away as I thought he would. My eyes were locked on his, my expression relaxed because I was feeling relaxed after it all, and he knew I wasn’t mad he’d been looking. I accepted it, I believe my look showed that. He kept looking and the moment elongated. His nervousness started to fade, I could see as if my very look was relaxing him.

After what felt like a life, I smiled reached my hand to his, holding it up and guiding it to my baby bump. Caught off guard, Daryl found himself with his palm against the bare skin of my belly.

“Do you feel it?” I smiled. He looked down at our hands, trying to focus. “There, again!”

“No… Didn’t feel nothin’.”

“No?”

“No… Must be too small yet.”

“Yeah...” my smile faltered a bit. “Wish you could feel it.”

And still, I held his hand there, hoping he’d be able to feel maybe the first real movement of the baby, even though I had no idea it was already time for the baby to start moving. I wasn’t even sure the little things I’d been feeling really were the baby, maybe they were just my stomach growling or gas or whatever. But all I was sure now was that his big palm as covering nearly my entire bump and it was warm and comfy to feel it there, and I wished he wouldn’t let go even if he felt no movement. I was still watching him when he looked up from the bump to my eyes again.

It was when I felt the tiniest movement of his thumb on my skin. Slow, soft but surely back and forth, his eyes unsure on me as if asking if this was okay. The tiniest smile on my lips told him it was. It was more than okay; it was welcome. I could feel the strong muscles on his hand working under my fingers as he kept slowly moving his thumb. Just as slowly, scared I’d spook him to stop, I moved my fingertips over the back of his hand, up to his thick, strong wrist, to his forearm, and there I mimicked his slow strokes, our eyes still fixed on one another, softly, interrupted only by slow blinking.

The farmhouse around us had gone silent, people retreated to their rooms or back outside to the tents after diner, meaning a long time had passed as we just laid there, soft strokes and eyes deep into the other.

God, how I wanted him…

I licked my lips before whispering, breaking the long silence, “Daryl…”

His thumb stopped and I regretted speaking, I didn’t want him to stop, so to show it I kept stroking his forearm and smiled softly at him, hoping it would make him see I was not asking him to stop. It worked because after a moment he hummed in question and his thumb moved again.

Well, here we go.

“Just… I wanted to tell you that… Just in case you want to, if you’re thinking about it… It’s okay if… If you want to kiss me. I’d like that.”

Ok, not as eloquent as I’d wished, but well.

He stopped again, frozen, eyes still on mine, not moving. My heart started beating faster, a bit faster to each second he didn’t move, wondering if I’d made a huge mistake voicing what I’d been thinking. But the moment was so real, so long, so soft, I’d felt certain he was thinking it too, but maybe he wasn’t, and my face started feeling warmer. I stopped my fingers on his forearm. Seconds elongated and the longer it passed, the more I wanted to get up and leave the room apologizing for the mistake. However, Daryl hadn’t moved away, his hand still resting warmly on my stomach, his body close and his eyes deep on mine.

And then he moved.

His hand left my skin leaving it a bit cold where it had been, but I only noticed it for a moment because his hand was now on my face, covering my cheek, fingertips under my ear, and he was moving slowly and careful to me, his eyes clear as the sky closing slowly just as he got so near I could feel his intake of breath before his lips touched mine. I closed my eyes and allowed him to softly press his lips against mine and I thought my heart was going to burst in my chest. I felt like crying; his touch as so gentle, so careful I couldn’t believe this was the same Daryl, the fighter, hunter, the ill-mannered redneck I was glad to call a friend. No, this was the other side of him, the one I believed not many people had had the pleasure of knowing before. This kiss was being given by the loyal, soft side of him, the one that cared about other people more than he cared about himself, the protective, kind one I though not even Daryl himself believed to exist. It was clear on the heedfulness of his touch, on his gentle hand on my face.

I lifted my hand to rest on top of his on my face, holding him there, telling him I liked it, that I was welcoming his touch and his kiss, and allowed myself to wonder for a second if I had even been touched so gently before and came out with nothing. Nobody had ever given me such a tender first kiss and I had never felt so overwhelmed by a kiss that I felt my eyes prickling with tears under my closed eyelids.

Slowly he let go, his lips on mine making a soft kissing sound. I kept my eyes closed for a moment longer, my hand holding his on my face, and I could still feel it, my lips tingling, wanting more. I lazily opened my eyes. Daryl hadn’t rested his head on the pillow again, he stayed there, halfway between our spots, looking at me with many questions in his eyes, like he wanted me to tell him what to do now that we’d crossed the line, now that there was probably no turning back. I had the answer, I knew exactly what it was.

I let him know by closing the space between us once again to kiss him, my lips pressing firmly against his, more firmly than he had, and my hand let go of his to run down his forearm to his elbow and upper arm and rest on the back of his shoulder. His own hand on my face slid back into my hair, his fingers purchasing their place on my scalp under the locks, and it felt so good I whimpered against his mouth, parting my lips against his, an invitation; my hand tightening on his shoulder as a pleading, so he parted his own lips to allow his tongue to touch my lower lip. I responded to him instantly and we both took deep intakes of breath so we wouldn’t have to let go anytime soon. I slid closer to him, our chests touching now, and then we both just let it go, our kiss deepening, tongues dancing together, lips getting to know each other, moving slowly and intensely, the effects starting to make themselves present on our bodies.

Daryl moved over, his hand sliding from my hair to my back, turning to nearly get on top of me, his mouth never leaving mine, but just as he turned a bit too far, the fresh stiches on his side stung from being twisted and he hissed, letting go of my lips and returning abruptly to his position on his side. Startled, I covered her mouth with my hand, eyes wide watching him. His face showed more annoyance than pain, his eyes tightly closed for a moment before he looked at me.

“Sorry!” I told him. “Did I hurt you?”

“Was me, can’t turn. It’s fine,” he said in a strained voice.

“Did you open a stitch?”

“Don’t think so. ‘S fine,” and he relaxed, the pain subsiding, and rested his head on the pillow again, with me still there real close to him. “Come here,” his voice gentle once again told me as he pressed his hand on my back, trying to bring me to him.

“Maybe we should wait… You’re hurt, don’t wanna make it worse,” I said even as I approached, our noses nearly touching.

“Ain’t no way this will make me worse,” he told her with a shy smirk and I laughed against his lips as he tried to kiss me again.

“What I mean…” I pushed him softly to be able to look into his eyes. “Is that if we keep this up I’m gonna want… More… And you can’t, you’re convalescing.”

“I’m convalescing,” he repeated, eyebrows up. “I’ll have ya know I’ve gone huntin’ with a broken leg. I’ve tracked deer with a concussion.”

I was smiling but a bit more seriously now, as I held him close. “You were shot, Daryl… Got an arrow to your side,” and I lowered my head to the pillow, pressing my face against his neck and pulling him tightly to me. “I’m just happy you’re here, alive, and that I can hold you… And that now I can kiss you, and not just keep liking you from a distance…”

He chuckled, hugging me against him. “You like me?”

I laughed, face hidden on his neck, “Shut up.”

“I think ya like me.”

“’Course I like you, ya jerk,” I looked up at him again and slapped his shoulder. “Why you think I’m in bed making out with you, all cryin’ and _ooh please don’t die_ and shit?”

Daryl was looking at me with a playful smile, but halfway through my speaking he got bit by bit more serious and his eyebrows went down in confusion.

“You serious ‘bout this?”

I took a moment to answer, staring at him before saying “Yeah. Why did ya think?”

“I… I dunno… ‘Cause ya was scared.”

“I _was_ scared. I was fuckin’ shitless scared,” I was serious now. “I think when they carried you into the house I stood frozen like an ice statue for like ten minutes in the front yard, unable to move because I thought ya was dead and what the fuck was I gonna do with my life without you,” and I was breathless again and tried to let go of him to sit up because I knew I had said too much. There was something about a living and breathing Daryl lying so close to me being all gentle and kissing _so good_ that it made me talk too much too soon. We’d just kissed for the first time, _finally_ , and here I was opening my heart and talking feelings and shit.

But he held me, not letting me get up, “Hey, don’t – I know. I know, alrigh’?” and I stopped trying and looked at him again. “I knew ya liked me, jus’ can’t understand it. Not used ta people likin’ me, is all, especially girls. And I didn’t know it was… Like _this_ , that ya wanted me like this…”

“Fuck, Daryl…” I settled again, replacing myself on his neck and holding him tight again. “You got no idea, do you?”

“Nah, think I don’t…” he whispered. “But I ain’t about to argue that now…”

“Good. Hope you don’t argue it later too, ‘cause I ain’t going anywhere.”

He just hummed, holding me in his arms, and we went quiet. His hand was traveling up and down my back and I relaxed on his hold, my face on his neck, feeling the smell and the heat of his skin, my hand on the back of his shoulder also starting to softly explore. I knew I should stop touching him because I’d only want more, but it was impossible. My hand moved to the nape of his neck, fingertips light on his skin.

“Don’t know why I can’t find her…” he whispered into the silence, hand still roaming on my back.

I took a moment to answer, wondering if he’d say more. I knew Daryl. I knew he didn’t talk much, especially about feelings and stuff, so I should give him room to keep speaking if he’d like, but after a while, he remained silent.

“Not sure why…” I started. “But with how hard you trying, got no doubt we’ll know soon enough.”

“Wanna find her alive…”

“I know… But you gotta know, Daryl… Won’t be your fault if ya don’t.”

He stilled in my arms, his hand stopping stroking me and I could feel him tense.

“Yeah it will,” he disagreed.

I lifted my head again to look at him, “You’re doing all ya can. You nearly died for her today. You’re out there every day, doin’ what everybody else shoulda. What I shoulda too.”

“Nah, ya can’t,” he shook his head. “Ya gotta take care of yourself, ‘s dangerous out there.”

“And yet you’re still out there all day,” I agreed firmly. “Nobody’s tryin’ as hard as you.”

“Promised her momma I’d keep trying ‘till I find her,” Daryl mumbled looking down, at somewhere near my throat.

“That’s…” I paused to lick my lips. “That’s some real serious thing to promise someone… Why you doin’ that?”

Daryl looked back at me, “She’s twelve, alone in the woods. What kinda prick wouldn’t do that?”

“Well, Rick, Shane. They ain’t doing that.”

“Yeah, but you told me to.”

“What?” I frowned.

“The day she vanished, back on the road. You put me in charge of finding her.”

“I put you in charge of _looking for_ her,” I corrected firmly. “I never said _find her_ , and I never promised Carol Sophia would come back alive.”

“You don’t think I can do it?”

“Yes, I do. I think you can find her. If anyone can, that’s you. We just can’t know if she’ll be… You know, still _her_ when you do. And if she’s not, that will not be on you. It won’t even be on Rick, who’s the one who left her alone in the woods in the first place, why would it be on you who’s nearly getting killed looking for her?”

Daryl’s face was hard, his emotion hiding behind angry eyes, even though he hadn’t let go of me, not for a moment. He said nothing, just kept looking at me and I think he was repeating my words in his head, trying to make sense of them, wanting to believe them. After a while, he closed his eyes briefly and when he opened them again, it was a bit softer and he looked down again.

“Carol said I’m every bit as good as Rick ‘n Shane, ‘cause I’m tryin’,” he whispered, his hand restarting his caress on my back.

“Now there I disagree with her,” I said and he looked up at my eyes again, a bit startled, and I smiled softly at him. “You’re better.”

His eyebrows went down and he scoffed, his hand sliding from my back to my waist as he turned a little away from me. “Come on, jus’… Don’t.”

“I mean it, Daryl,” I also moved, lifting up to rest on one elbow so I could look at him, and smiled, “You really got no idea, do you? Nobody knows you as I do. Them all, they don’t see it. But ya’ve been by my side all this time, since before, since you went to the diner to warn me and then to the house to save me from those assholes and took me to your place and never left my side.”

“Don’t know what kinda asshole wouldn’t do that…” he mumbled looking down, away from my eyes.

“Many of them wouldn’t,” I replied quickly. “I chose to stay close to you Daryl, you know I could have left on my own, maybe even survived alone, but I didn’t even want to, I wanted to be with you. Merle was a package deal, but it was for you that I chose to stay, that I chose the three of us was a group that’d stay together. Ain’t regretted it for a second,” and then I placed a hand on his chest making him look at me again. “You might got trouble believing or understandin’ it ‘cause o’ some crap people told ya your whole life, but I’ll say it all until you believe it.”

I laid down on my side again, nudging him to turn to me and he did, facing me with unsure eyes, but he said nothing. I knew he didn’t feel like what I was saying was true, not someone like Daryl who believed himself to be nothing, who’d grown up with a brother like Merle who probably put him down at any chance he had and God knows what other crap he had to face growing up, but I was sure of what I was saying. I adored him, wanted him by my side for the whole of the end of the world and I was decided to make him see it eventually.

So now I just kissed him again, holding his face in my hand, tenderly, trying to convey my feelings with no words now. He took a moment but kissed me back, just as softly for a while until deepening it again, his hand on my hip pulling me closer once again. The kiss was quicker to heat up this time. Daryl’s fingers tightened on my hip and sent electricity all over my body. My hand slid down on him, from his face to his neck and chest and rounding him up to his nape again, where I pressed and made him let out a low throaty sound, unconsciously imitated by me. Encouraged, Daryl moved his leg between my knees and I complied by parting them to give him room, our groins together now, his hand going down to press on my ass.

Damn, yes, that what I’d missed.

I moaned on his mouth at the feeling of him hard inside his pants and rubbed my thigh against it. He motioned me rhythmically and we moaned together against each other’s lips.

“Fuck, girl…” Daryl groaned as he slid his lips from my mouth to my neck, burying his head between mine and the pillow.

“Can add that you’re a fucking amazing kisser to all that,” I smiled to the feeling of his tongue on my neck, goosebumps rising all over my body and my mouth finding his shoulder.

“Ya said somethin’ ‘bout maybe we should wait?” he asked with a smirk just before pulling my skin into his mouth, making me moan and softly bite on his shoulder.

“Got no idea why I said that,” I moaned with a longer rub of my hip against his as my hand slid down from his nape to his upper back and then down, my palm opened as to feel as much of his skin as I could, the raised skin from his scars – which I’d seen briefly before when I entered the room.

But he stopped all he was doing with a strong, involuntary flinch, pulling away from me, his hand on my hip pushing me from him, not too far but fast, enough to startle me. I immediately let go of him, holding my hand up in the air, eyes wide. Daryl looked at me as if he didn’t even know why he’d done it, shame instantly filling his eyes as he lowered them, his lips working on saying something but no words coming.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered as softly as I could, even with my startled expression. “I’m sorry, didn’t mean to – Won’t touch if you don’t want me to, I’m sorry.”

“Sam, I –” he started but paused to clean his throat, still not looking at me. “You did nothin’, I just… You don’t wanna touch ‘em.”

“I don’t mind touching ‘em. Really. But won’t if you don’t want me to.”

“Is not ‘cause of you…”

“I know.”

“Sorry…”

“Please don’t apologize for that. It ain’t your fault,” I lowered my hand from where it was still raised between us to rest on his cheek, making him finally look back at me. “It was done to you. Not your fault.”

“Jus’ don’t like being touched there.”

“Then I won’t. We’re learning, Daryl… I’m learning what you like… And what you don’t like, just as you’ll learn me.”

Daryl nodded weakly, eyes lowering again, still ashamed even with my reassurances, his hand light on my hip. I let my own hand slide from his face to his chest and rest there, right on his heart, feeling it was beating fast.

“Who was it? If you don’t mind telling me…”

He was silent for a moment, unmoving, before groaning out, “My old man…”

I also paused before speaking again, because I didn’t want my first reaction to be calling the old Dixon ugly names, but it ended up being “Son of a bitch” in a whisper all the same. Daryl looked up at my eyes at that, shame still there, but now also surprised.

“I understand you, Daryl…”

“Ya don’t, Sam…” he disagreed gently. “You might wanna, but ya had a good daddy. Can’t know it.”

I didn’t answer, just kept looking at him, my eyes soft once again at him for a long moment until I slowly started untangling myself from him. Silently, Daryl tried to hold me there so I wouldn’t go, but I insisted, pushing him gently until he allowed me to sit up, now not an inch of him touching me. I missed it, wanted to go back. But this was important. He had to know.

I didn’t go far. I stayed there, only turned to sit with my back to him, still close, and quietly crossed my arms and reached for the hem of my shirt, slowly but certainly pulling it up and off. My locks were momentarily lifted by the shirt only to fall back heavily over my back as I discarded the shirt on the bed. I looked back at Daryl over my shoulder and, my eyes not leaving his, reached back to slide the dreads over my opposite shoulder, showing him back, only the beige strap of my bra partially blocking the view.

His eyes left mine to look at what I was showing him. My skin was adorned with another tattoo on my upper back, just under my nape, a lotus flower with little, delicate chains and jewelry. Then, right under the strap of the bra, on my right side, as clearly as the day a burn scar tissue. I knew it looked quite healed because it had been there for a long time, with about 8 inches long, rosy on my white skin.

“I may have had a good daddy,” I started with a soft voice, still looking at him over my shoulder, and he looked at me, “but it don’t mean I had a good momma.”

He stared at my eyes for a moment longer and then looked again at the scar, a hand slowly reaching out to it but stopping before his fingertips could feel it.

“When?” he asked simply.

“Was four. Mom was tryin’ to quit drinking then,” I told him as she turned my head away, looking down at my hands. “I was being annoying or something, I don’t know, kept calling her. She was cooking and telling me to shut up but I wouldn’t, so she took this pot from the stove with boiling water and threw it at me. I guess I saw her reach for it and turned to run cause the water fell on my back.”

“Shit…” Daryl whispered behind me and sat up, groaning a little as his stitches ached, but he rested his weigh on his hand and sat behind me.

“’S why dad got my custody,” I told him. “They were separated already and he was not my real daddy but he’d already adopted, so when I was at the hospital he got my custody and left her for good.”

“You saw her again?”

“She tried a few times after she got outta jail ‘bout three years after. But she couldn’t be alone with me and she got all angry and frustrated with it and never showed up again,” I sighed heavily. “Years later I heard she’d gotten a new guy, had another baby and moved away from Georgia, but never knew anythin’ more than that. But it don’t matter,” I looked over my shoulder at him again. “What I mean is I understand. I know what’s like to get hurt by the person who should love you the most.”

He nodded as he bit on his inner lip again. I couldn’t really tell, but he seemed to be feeling things, his eyes were a little shinier, but I couldn’t look more to be sure because he lowered his forehead until it touched my upper back tattoo and kept looking at the scar, braving up enough to touch it with his fingertips. I shivered slightly, but it was because of his gentle touch, not the scar. He traced the entire expense of it gently and slowly, and I leaned back into him. He stopped touching the scar to hold my waist as he lifted his head and placed a kiss where his forehead had been.

It was only then that I noticed I was actually nearly naked, right there only on my bra, but strangely, as much as I’d wanted to be like that with him, I knew this didn’t mean anything right now. This wasn’t sexual, and at the moment I didn’t even want it to be. I just wanted to be here with him, my skin on his, to hold him and feel him hold me.

Now he just motioned me to lay down on my side with him, my back to his chest, and he slid the sheet over our bodies, one arm pillowing my head and the other circling me to rest his hand once again on my baby bump. I held both his hands – one on the mattress and the other on my stomach, and sighed, closing my eyes.

“Thank you,” I heard Daryl whisper behind me, close to my ear, and I snuggled back on him, my back flush against his chest. For a moment I thought of questioning what he was thanking me for, but I didn’t. I knew then what he was grateful for. So I held up his arm under my head until his hand reached my mouth and planted a little kiss there.

“Don’t gotta thank me… You ‘n I… We’re _it_.”

Daryl lowered his head to my shoulder and pressed a lingering kiss there, the hand on my belly stroking me lightly, and said nothing. He held me tight, burying his face against my neck and I melted against his chest, and I could feel his heart hammering right there on my back.


	26. Day 70, part 1

I was under attack. Walkers had overpowered the farm. No, worse, people had invaded and were stealing all we had, they would kill us all. No. No, wait. I was on my knees on the bed, the bedside table lamp in my hand ready to attack. Daryl had sat up and had a knife ready, both arms up.

But it was Mr. Greene and Patricia, who had barged into the room speaking something, startling us to death. I was breathing hard, heart hammering, and Daryl allowed himself to feel the sting from moving the stitches too harshly as he lowered the knife. I slowly lowered the lamp too, I have no idea how it ended up in my hand. The two intruders were silent, shocked to see me there and I turned to replace the lamp. Daryl motioned the sheet for me and only then I noticed I was on my bra in front of Mr. Greene. I sat back down on the bed and covered myself.

“Sorry,” I told them.

Patricia took the tray with Daryl’s ignored diner and replaced it with a cup of coffee and a plate with two toasts, and she said nothing.

“I’ll give you two a moment to gather yourselves,” Mr. Greene said, disapproval dripping from his tone. He looked down at Daryl, “It’s time to check on your stitches, and then you can go back out to your tent.”

They left at that, closing the door behind them. We both took another moment staring at the closed door, still confused, and then looked at each other wide-eyed.

Oh, the self-consciousness I found in his eyes! The doubt of what was going to happen now, if I had been sure, if I had changed my mind, of what he should do! Daryl was his many flaws but how _adorable_ he was! I adored it, but at the same time, it got me angry imagining what people had done to him his whole life to make him so insecure, so defensive. It was unfair. He was such a good man, his heart was capable of so much and he didn’t even know it. He didn’t think I’d still want him the next morning, he was so unsure, ready for me to tell him it had been a mistake and it would never happen again.

But despite all those thoughts that came to my mind in a second, to his utter confusion I laughed, trying to hold it and making an unladylike noise, lying down in bed by his side again.

“Fuck, it was like getting caught by daddy all over again!” I said as I laughed and turned on my side to face him. As I did I saw a slight change in his eyes, a little relaxation because the first thing I said was not ‘get the fuck outta my sight’. I stopped laughing and, still smiling told him “This ain’t how I imagined waking up today.”

He laid back down as well also on his side, getting real close to me, “How’d you imagine it?”

“Well…” I approached even more, “Something like…”

And I kissed him. He reached out for me immediately, responding to the kiss eagerly, his hand holding my waist and pulling me flush against him. I was still careful to avoid the bandages on his side and head and also his back, but other than that I let my hands roam to all the places I’d wanted to touch, his side, ribcage, chest, and lower to his ass to pull him closer. The turned a bit to me, nearly on top, his hand sliding from my waist to my stomach and slowly up. His kiss was so good, firm and demanding but still gentle, hot and slow and _damn_ , got me all ready for him.

He let go to look down at me as soon as his hand touched the underside of my bra, and his eyes fixated on another tattoo he hadn’t seen yet. My underboob lilies, that start between my breasts and elongate to both sides right on the line under them. He stopped all to look at it, his fingers tracing it, dipping under the bra between my breasts.

“Fuck, this is sexy as hell…” he breathed out a moment before lowering his head and kissing it. I throbbed when I felt his tongue on my skin and his hand reaching up and under the bra to grab the underside of my breast. My hip thrust up without my control when he replaced his fingers with his mouth and I must have mumbled something but I have no idea what. I was ready, damn, I was gonna fuck Daryl right there and now.

But he stopped, pulling my bra down to cover the part of it that was showing and looked up at me, his lips parted and his eyes hooded, fucking sexy as hell and he whispered, “We gotta stop.”

“No…” I whined ad I tried to pull him back to me, to kiss him and never stop, but he resisted.

“Can’t do it under grandpa’s roof.”

I breathed out, unable to tear my eyes off him. “Shit… You’re right.”

But he still kissed me again, this time a long, soft gentle kiss on my lips that got me holding his face just as tenderly. After the kiss, we stared at each other for a long moment and I was unable to contain my smile.

“Just go,” he told me as he gently pushed me away.

It was never so hard to get up from a bed as it was that morning.

* * *

Carl was up and about that morning, physically looking as though nothing had happened, but when Shane caught him hiding a gun under his shirt he insisted in learning how to shoot, it was clear the incident had affected him more than anyone had thought. He had matured a little, I mean, as much as a 12-year-old boy can mature, and he had a point. I’d been saying he and Sophia had to learn how to defend themselves for a very long time now, and I agreed he should know how to shoot, but not only that. He, and all other from the group, had to restart a physical training with knives and other weapons, not just guns. I couldn’t understand how fucking difficult could it be for them to understand that guns were not our best choice. Lori ended up allowing Shane to teach him after hesitating a lot. I mean, _a lot_. I swear it was like she wasn’t living in the same world as I was.

Daryl came out of the house followed by Mr. Greene, who kept an eye on him as he climbed down the porch steps. Daryl was walking slowly but straight and looking well, without the bandage on his head, a hand placed on his side where I knew his stitches were. He saw me instantly as I walked towards him as if his eyes were trained in finding me.

“Hey,” I smiled up at him. “Good to see you up!”

Daryl looked quickly over his shoulder to point at Mr. Greene, who as still there. “It’s no use anyway, he’s forbid me to go out there too soon.”

I laughed, “Yeah, as if you’ll actually listen to him.”

“Goin’ out there as soon as I can.”

“I know. Just don’t go today, the stitches are still too fresh,” I said reaching to touch his arm.

“Yeah…” he said quietly. “Still a bit sleepy from meds anyway.”

I was about to tell him he needed and deserved to rest all day, but Mr. Greene interrupted from his spot on the porch, “Miss Danes, a word if you please?”

I looked at him and back at Daryl, fighting a laugh, and he also seemed amused, eyebrows up, “Miss Danes?” I questioned

“Grandpa must be mad,” he said before also touching my arm and walking away towards the tents. I looked at him go for a moment before turning to Mr. Greene and climbing the steps.

“How you doing, Mr. Greene?”

“I have two young daughters, Sam,” he started directly. “I keep an eye on them, at Beth with her boyfriend, and have kept an eye of Maggie her whole teenage years,” oh I saw where he was going and this was a big, big nope. “I do not wish to have to keep an eye –”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Greene,” I cut him out. “for interrupting you but I have to stop you right there. First of all, you need to know that nothing happened between me and Daryl last night. I slept with him, and I say it in the most innocent meaning of the word because he’d been hurt and I wanted to be close and check on him. I didn’t have a shirt on because I decided not to sleep on this one because I’d been wearing it all day,” well, okay, a bit of a lie there but I didn’t have to tell the old man that I took it off to show Daryl my scar so we’d bond over past traumatizing experiences. “So you can rest assured that nothing happened and nothing would have happened even if he wasn’t hurt. I would never disrespect your house like this when I know what your ways and beliefs are. Nothing happened, and you don’t need to give me the dad's speech.”

I kept looking at him expecting him to say something, but he just tightened his lips and nodded, so I turned to go.

“Your people are getting a bit too comfortable here on my farm.”

To the point. Ok. I turned again to face him.

“I’m aware of what Rick asked you. I’d like you to know that he asked it on his own mind, he never talked to me about it before going to you. We only talked about it after.”

“And do you not share his thoughts and his request?”

“Honestly? I don’t.”

He seemed impressed, raising his thick grey eyebrows, “You don’t?”

“No, sir,” I placed both my hands on my jeans back pockets. “I’m leaning more to the realistic side. When Rick is thinkin’ ‘n actin’ out of desperation to find his wife and kid a safe place to live through the end of the world, I’m thinking more rationally about our safety.”

“You don’t think the farm is a safe place?” he crossed his arms, a bit defiantly as if it offended him I could think such thing.

So I explained to him everything I had already explained to Rick, all my thoughts about the safety of the place, how easy it had been for me to just run into the farm and barge in, how simple it had been for the others to find the farm and just drive into his land, and that if we had been able to do it so easily, anyone, dead or alive, could as well. I also told him what I thought we needed from a place to settle in.

“So if you’re considering Rick’s request, and I ain’t asking you to, we’d stay, but then you’d have to permit us to do a lot of changes around here to make it safe. I honestly don’t think it would be our best choice seeing that there’re places out there that got walls and gates built where we could just settle in.”

He was quiet for a long moment looking at me, then looked away, around at the people by the tents going on with their days, thoughtful, and then looked at me again.

“Your group surely don’t seem to know that’s how you’ve been thinking. I say it again; they are getting too comfortable.”

“You’re right, sir. I’ll gather them and set everything clear as soon as I can. Especially now that Carl is up, we’d all pro’ly better start planning our leave, finding another camp to keep looking for Sophia,” I paused. “So if you still considering letting us stay, now would be a good time to let us know so we can all start planning some stuff. But you want us gone, we gone, and forever grateful for what you’ve done for Carl and for the temporary shelter you provided us.”

As he again only nodded saying nothing, I turned and went down the steps, making my way to the tents. I found everyone ready to go gun training and I rushed to Daryl’s tent. He had the door open and I could see him in his cot with a book in his hand from a few steps away, and only the noticed Andrea was in there with him. Ugh.

‘What, no pictures?” Daryl was asking when I stopped right in front of the tent and crossed my arms.

“I’m so sorry… I feel like shit.”

Good, you feel like shit. Go on and keep feeling it.

“Yeah, you ‘n me both,” Daryl told her in a dry voice.

“I don’t expect you to forgive me, but if there’s anything I can do…”

“Can start by listenin’ to what people tell you for a start,” he said looking up at her. I didn’t hear her say anything, I don’t think she had an answer to give, because after a moment I saw her move and go through the open tent flap. She saw me then and froze a bit. “And hey,” we both heard Daryl said from his cot and Andrea turned to look at him. “Shoot me again and you’d best pray I’m dead.”

She nodded with a little smile and turned again. I said nothing just watched her approach me.

“I know you hate me,” was how she started, “never liked me before and even more now after what I did. But you need to understand that I did think it was a walker, I would have never shot if for a moment I thought it could be one of ours.”

I had my face showing clear confusion, “What are you talking about, Andrea? You think _that’s_ why I’m angry? You think _that_ was your mistake?” she said nothing and had the same confused expression, shaking her head a little. “We all thought it was a walker! The guys ran to him with bats and knives in hand to kill it. That was not the point, Andrea.”

“Oh, ok, then what was it?” she said defiantly crossing her arms. “Is it because it was _me_? Because people in this camp are suddenly so terrified of having _me_ around guns?”

Jesus Christ and all the saints I didn’t even believe in!

I had to hold myself not to answer too fast and breathe, my head going down as I pinched the bridge of my nose with my fingers.

“No, Andrea,” I finally said, looking up at her again. “That’s not it. At all, you got it all wrong. You think this is about _you_ when it isn’t. It’s not about you and your problems and whatever you will want to do with a gun. I am not that worried about you all the time to make decisions based on _you_. Okay?” she still tried to maintain her defiant expression, now mixed to show she was a bit offended. She pretended to laugh and shook her head. “Are you listening to me? There was a reason Dale and I told you not to shoot!”

“Oh, I know all about Dale’s reason!”

“Alright, I don’t care about Dale’s reason, I know about mine. You think I told you that because I don’t like you? Come on, Andrea, really? Are we in ninth grade?”

She stuttered a bit, looking away trying to say something but she had no answer. Then she gave up, huffing out a breath and looking down.

“It ain’t personal, Andrea! I told you not to shoot ‘cause shooting must be our last option. ‘Cause the guys had it. ‘Cause the noise of a round can attract walkers. ‘Cause every bullet counts and that one less bullet can mean whether you survive or not someday. It ain’t such a hard thing to understand.” Andrea said nothing, crossed arms, looking down. “You want to help with security? You got it,” this made her look up at me, surprised. “You’ll get the gun training and you’ll be put on lookout schedule and you’ll have a gun in hand. But the first thing you need to learn, Andrea, and learn really good, is when it is and when it isn’t the time to shoot. Until you know how to make this decision on your own, you’re gonna have to listen to what other people tell you.”

She was embarrassed, still trying to disagree but it was clear she’d heard me. Maybe Andrea was the kind of person who had never learned how to admit when she was wrong in her life, so it was probably a struggle. But at least she seemed to be fighting it internally. So I gave her a little smile, touched her arm and rounded her to get into Daryl’s tent. He was lying there, the book forgotten by his side on the cot, an arrow in hand. I looked back out and saw Andrea walking away.

“Well, at least she’s got the decency to look ashamed,” I said looking down at him again and lowering myself to sit on the edge of his cot. It barely had space for one.

“You going away with’em today?” he asked me quietly as he fidgeted with the arrow.

“Yeah, I’ll see what I can do to help. Practice a little too, maybe learn something I don’t know. I ain’t a shooting expert anyway.”

“Did more than fine that night at the quarry.”

I smiled down at him, “Kinda, yeah, but I think I’d like to learn some other weapon, not rely just on guns.”

“I’ll teach you the crossbow if ya’d like.”

Adorable. Damn adorable man, he offered this shyly, as if he kind of expected me to say no.

“Yes!” I said excitedly. I loved the idea. “Yes, of course I’d like it!”

“Well then after that all we gotta do is find you another crossbow.”

“Pff, that’s just a detail,” I said waving my hand. “Alright, gotta go,” I slapped his thigh and got up, turning to go saying, “you get some sleep, I’ll be back later.”

“Slept just fine last night,” he said from his cot and I turned to look at him. There was a little smug smile on his face that got me blushing a little. I just smiled like a stupid teenager in love and left.

* * *

They were not as bad at it as I had thought they’d be. The training Shane had started at the quarry with part of the group had had lasting results. I practiced a little too and let Shane and Rick oversee it all because they were professionals, Shane was even a certified instructor. He corrected my standing and my posture once and I did feel good results after that. Carl took a while but started hitting the big targets making Rick look inflated with pride and even Lori smile. Andrea was very good – I was glad she had not been that good yesterday. Jimmy kept trying to look cool and failing miserably. Carol did really well for someone who had never had a gun in her hand before. Maybe she had it in her and didn’t even know.

After over two hours at it, with my ears ringing loudly, I went back to camp with everyone except for Andrea and Shane. He offered to take her to a deeper training because she was doing so well, something about moving targets, and they took off together.

Mr. Greene had been right. People were counting too much on the farm to guarantee our futures. I could see how tense Lori was, having just found out her pregnancy, and I saw her discussing something with Rick, tense. I could understand her. I’d been there on the first couple of weeks after I figured I was pregnant. This desperation of not knowing how life was gonna be, in what world my child was going to grow up in. But as days passed I calmed down and started thinking rationally, like I did now. Lori needed someone rational to help her now, and Rick wasn’t it. I wasn’t even sure he knew she was pregnant, but I was sure Rick was not level headed right now, dis desperation for permanent shelter blinding him to the facts. He’d been talking to Hershel still, I’m sure insisting for him to let us stay even after I had that talk with him. It was necessary to set things clear with the group, as soon as possible.

Lori called me to talk a little after that, even before I had time to do check on Daryl, and we sat together on the same log again.

“I’ve come to a decision,” she started, looking to the ground between her knees, her big eyes unblinking. “I’m not keeping it.”

I said nothing, but my mind went overdrive. I could understand her decision, I had considered it myself, and honesty, I probably didn’t do it only because I wouldn’t know how, I wouldn’t have the resources.

“Ok,” I told her. “How you gonna do it?”

She looked up at me at that, mouth hanging a little open and huffed a breath with an attempted laugh. “You’re so surprising, Sam, did you know that?”

I was genuinely confused. “Why’d you say that?”

“I just told you I plan to have an abortion!” she whispered.

“I know, so what?”

“It’s just - I just… Before it all if I told any friend I planned on doing this they’d go crazy! It’s an abortion, for God’s sakes!”

“Lori, I ain’t like your old friends, ok? I’ve always been what these days people were calling it ‘pro-choice’. I was not completely in favor of abortion, but never against it either. I think a woman has the right to choose, whatever her reasons are. You’re choosing, that’s all.”

She stared with the same baffled expression.

“I thought about doing it too,” I confessed.

“You did?”

“Yep… But I hadn’t told anyone; when I figured I was pregnant it was just me and the Dixons on the road. I didn’t tell them. And I had no idea how to do it, we didn’t go thought any pharmacy on the way and the days started passing and I just… I don’t know, accepted the fact. Knew I was fucked, but accepted it.”

She said nothing, looking down again and nodding. We were silent for a moment.

“I don’t know I’m as strong as you are,” she told me. “Even scared you’re just facing it. We don’t even know if we’ll have a place to live in if Hershel decides not to let us stay…”

“Oh, so Rick told you.”

She looked at me. “Yes. And he’s pretty certain he’ll manage to convince him.”

“Did Rick tell you that I disagree with it?”

She was surprised again. “No. No, he didn’t. Do you? You don’t think we can stay?”

“Lori…” I paused, sighing and looking around. “I’m gonna gather everyone tonight and talk about it. You have doubts most of the others pro’ly have too. I’ll tell you all my thoughts about it and things I have in mind. Please don’t worry about it now?”

She nodded quietly again and moved on, “I’ll have Glenn pick something up for me at the pharmacy in town as he did before. Do you think it’s okay?”

“If he’s up to it, sure. And,” I leaned to look at her in the eyes, “most important, if _you’re_ sure.”

“I am. I think I am. I… I don’t know.”

“I guess you’ll know when you have the pills in your hand.”

* * *

I spend the rest of the late afternoon in Daryl’s tent. I zipped us in, enjoying the fact the sun was going down and it wasn’t so hot anymore. Saying nothing as he saw me enter, Daryl turned to his side making room in the cot, but just barely. I squeezed myself there, my back against his chest, his arm as a pillow, and let myself relax, breathing out loudly.

“What’s goin’ on?” he asked quietly behind me, his hand resting on my hip.

I breathed in, “Shane and Andrea fucked. Glenn and Maggie are together. Lori’s pregnant, it’s Shane’s, and she says she’s gonna end it. Hershel’s pro’ly telling us to leave now that Carl is recovered.”

He was quiet for a long time, I only knew he was awake because he was caressing my hip with his thumb, much like he’d done the night before. It was comforting. I relaxed and nearly fell asleep there, in the safety of his arms.

“Cherokee house,” was all he said, and it was all he had to say for a light to come to my mind.

I turned a little to look at him over my shoulders and he lifted his head a bit to look at me, “Cherokee house, of course!”

“It’s messed up but better than the tents,” he made a point. “And still in the area, so we can keep looking for Sophia.”

I said nothing, too happy to even think of another good reason. I smiled at him and he kept looking for me for a moment before he leaned in a little and kissed me. The butterflies in my stomach took off flying. It was real… Daryl and I were together now, we wouldn’t even need to talk about this. We were _it_ since the beginning, but now it was more, now he was my guy and I could kiss him when I wanted, and I could cuddle with him and have his support, as I always had before.

I was not alone.

* * *

There was a fire burning high in the middle of the circle. The Greene’s house had its lights on a bit far from there, quiet. I had asked everyone to gather there, we had diner – a divine chicken pot roast that Carol had made us all – and then it was time to talk. Daryl was up, a little outside the circle, up and leaning on his side against a tree. Lori was staring at me and when I looked at her, she held my eyes and shook her head slightly. She was telling me she hadn’t gone through with the abortion. I knew she would know what she really wanted when the moment came.

So that was it, one more new baby to the group.

Conversation died on its own, as everyone knew I wanted to say something. So I got up so all could see me, and got it over with.

“I wanted to talk to you about our situation here at the farm. Mr. Greene talked to me about it today and I felt like I should let you all know. Our, uh… Our stay here is most likely no permanent,” and as I had thought so, people reacted immediately as if I had just dropped the worst possible news. I waited for them to start listening again. “Rick’s talked to Mr. Greene and asked if he’d let us stay permanently – without discussing it with me or anyone before, I should add,” I said taking a look at him and everyone probably knew I didn’t like it, “and he says he’d consider it if we followed his rules as we’re here.”

“So there’s a chance?” Lori asked

“There _is_ a chance but I honestly don’t believe in it. He’s too different from us, the way he thinks about walkers, he thinks there’s a cure for them and we shouldn’t kill them, for God’s sake… But anyway, he’s thinking about it, and if he says yes, we’ll stay. He says no, we’re gone.”

“But where are we gonna go?” Andrea’s voice rose above the other’s and I heard Shame say something about Fort Benning.

“What we need to think,” I started and waited for silence again. “We need a safe place. Right? And as I explained to Rick before when he told me what he asked Mr. Greene, I don’t think this is the right place.”

“You don’t?” Dale asked

“It’s a good place!” Carol gave her opinion

“Well, it’s a good place, ok, there’s space, water, food, I can see all that and how this can masquerade it all as a perfect place to stay. But think about it! It’s all open, all around. Small wooden fences won’t stop any threat. Walkers can fall over it and reach us, people can jump over them, open gates. Hell, the way _we_ got here? We just barged in, Mr. Greene couldn’t do anything about it! We had good intentions, but what about the next group that find the farm? It ain’t safe, not at all. It’s been good but it’s not supposed to be permanent because we need more than this. We need more than sleep in tents for fuck knows how long. We need a place we can build a life, make our own rules, have safety, somewhere we can make plans and think of the future.” I paused and they were all quiet looking at me, absorbing what I said. “The CDC, the nursing home, Fort Benning, this farm? We’ve been placing our future in other people’s hands. We’ve been looking for help since the beginning, and it hasn’t worked at all until now. I think it’s time we stop. We gotta stop looking for others to be our solution, we gotta stop believing other places and other people will save us. What we gotta do now is take control of our situation and make it happen. We, not others!”

I stopped because I thought I was getting too passionate. They were all quiet, kind of baffled staring at me and them looking around at each other.

“I like the thought…” it was Theo who said first.

“What do you suggest?” Glenn asked me.

“For now, I suggest we wait for Mr. Greene’s decision. I talked to him about it. If he lets us stay, we’ll have to work on the farm’s perimeter to make it safe, build around, you know, walls, strong fences, a sturdy gate, and I don’t think he’d want us making so many changes in the farm. And if he doesn’t we’ll accept it, pack our things and go. There’s that big farmhouse nearby where we can hole up as we keep looking for Sophia,” I looked at Carol who let her shoulders relax as soon as I said it. She was sure worried I was planning of abandoning the search, “but again, just temporarily because it’s just in the open as we are now and it’s not what we want. But at least there are real bedrooms and beds, so it’s better than the tents we have now.”

“And after that?” Rick questioned.

“We’ll find another place, but not just any place. As I told you, Rick, _we need walls_. We’ll find somewhere, a hotel, a school, a gated community, wherever we can be safe inside and stay permanently. I’m having a baby for fuck’s sake, I need to have a safe place to give birth, somewhere the baby’s cries will not attract walkers, ‘cause if we’re in the open, _it will_ ,” I looked briefly at Lori then and she knew I was also talking about her baby. “So what I mean is just… Be prepared to leave but don’t be all desperate about it. Leaving is actually our best choice. We’ll make things work; we don’t need this farm to make it. Just imagine how much we can do. All that we can build for ourselves and our kids. Ain’t gonna be easy, I’m well aware of that and I think you are too, but life ain’t easy or fair anyways, before or now.”

I thought it was enough, I’ve spoken a lot already and made my point, I guessed. People were still kind of stunned, digesting what I’d said, but I didn’t see anyone disagree. I even saw Shane nearly unperceptive nod, thoughtful. I looked at Daryl’s direction and he was staring right at me, head low and eyes on me, illuminated by the fire, and when he saw me look at him he nodded in support with a little smile. It calmed my heart a little more to see it.


	27. Day 70, part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If smut is what you want, you got it!

It wasn’t long after the talk that people started going to sleep. We still had some herbal tea, a natural one made with herbs Patricia had given us, and then I also left. Daryl had been gone for a while already. When I got to our little tent area I looked back and forth between my tent as his. I wanted to be in his with him but the cot was too small for the both of us to sleep well. But then again, I wasn’t really thinking about sleeping at the moment. Before I could make my choice, though, Daryl came out of his tent and saw me there.

“Get in here,” he said quietly.

I smiled and didn’t have to think for any second before going to him. Still outside, what I saw through the open flat warmed my heart and made my smile bigger. His foldable cot was gone and the entire inside space was covered in blankets, making a bed on the ground with two pillows and looking surprisingly comfortable even without a mattress. I looked back at him and rested a hand on his shoulder for balance as I lifted a leg to untie and take off my boot.

“That means I’m moving in?” I asked him and I removed the first one.

“If you want to…” he said shyly.

“I want to,” I told him with certainty. I wanted him to believe I was in. I was all in.

He smiled a little and tried to convey it by saying, “You pull my covers at night I’m kickin’ you out.”

It hit me then. I had no idea if I pushed the covers a night, or if I kicked, or talked in my sleep, simply because I never had anyone I’d slept in the same bed with regularly. I’d never really shared a bed with anyone before.

I kicked out the second boot and took his hand, pulling him inside with me. The tent was not tall enough for him to stand there, so he was bent a bit. He zipped it closed as I lowered myself to the ground, pushing a sheet away and lying down. It wasn’t soft or anything but it wasn’t much different from the sleeping bag I’d been using all those months. I scooched to the corner and he sat by my side.

“You did good today,” he told me just above a whisper as he bent his legs, resting his arms on his knees. “They needed to know the truth.”

“I think so too. Don’t wanna start making decisions and just informing them later,” I answered just as quietly.

“You not that kind of leader.”

It was the first time I head Daryl calling me a leader.

“The thing you told me a while ago? ‘Bout me stepping down and all?” he nodded. “Ain’t happening.” He answered with a pfff because he’d already known that. “I don’t trust the others… Rick and Shane. Shane’s acting weird, getting angrier ‘bout everything since he lost Lori. And Rick’s too desperate to think things clearly. And I don’t even know if he already knows Lori’s pregnancy, and if Shane knows, ‘cause will pro’ly make things even worse…”

Too fuckin much in my mind. I breathed out covering my face.

“Hey,” he told me making me look at him again. “Only so much ya can take care of. Gonna take care of the group? Alright. But can’t worry ‘bout their personal stuff, you’ll go nuts.”

He was right, of course. They were all grownups and I didn’t have to worry about their messed up love triangle. I sat up, ready to just forget about everything for a while, got to my knees and invaded his space straddling him, sitting on his thighs, my hands on his shoulders. Oh, the shoulders. Looking up at me he held me by my hips for a moment before sliding his arms around my lower back and pulling me flush to him. I rested my forehead on his.

“I don’t think I’d keep it up without you by my side. D’you know that?”

“Yeah, you would,” he disagreed and leaned in, his lips touching mine as he said, “But I’m gonna be here anyway.”

Did he have any idea what he was doing to my heart? At the very moment, it ached for him. At that very moment, I was so deeply in love with him and I’m sure he had no idea. He had no clue of how much he meant to me, how I’d come to rely on his presence in my life, of how good it was to have him by my side. He was troubled by insecurity, by the anger he’d grown up with, by the violence of his past. All of that hadn’t been enough to destroy his good soul, his huge heart. And it was mine. He was all mine.

I don’t know who started it but we were kissing then, and it was not soft, gentle, slow like before. It already started hot, his arms tight around me, my hands everywhere, his hair, face, shoulders, chest. I attacked his buttons, probably rip off some of them, and roughly opened his sleeveless shirt, letting go of his mouth and curving over him to kiss his neck. He bent his neck to give me full access and as I licked his skin I heard him moan quietly, more like a sigh. Oh, such a good sound…

His hands moved over my back under my t-shirt and slid to my side, where I felt him grip me strongly, his fingertips on my flesh when I bit on his neck. That made me hiss, control gone. I let go of his neck and took off my t-shirt sudden and roughly, and just as fast I reached behind me to unhook my bra and threw it away. His hand still gripping me, Daryl kept me away when I tried to kiss him again, just so he could look at me, bare right in line with his face. He licked his lips to be able to say “Fuck, Sam…” and then took them in his hands, squeezing them bit too gently for my likes. He looked up at me and I took the chance to kiss him again, hard and hot, and it did the trick. He grabbed my breasts strongly in his hands and earned a slow, strong rounding of my hips on him.

He groaned and suddenly turned to our side, laying me in the ground and covering me with his body, his mouth leaving mine to take a nipple even as he still held them in his hands. My head fell to the pillow, my eyes closed as I moaned aloud, but still aware I shouldn’t just let my voice go.

“Oh, fuck,” I said when he sucked my nipple into his mouth.

He let go for a moment to gently shush me and kept on, going to the other breast. I held his head on me and I felt like if he kept going I could cum just like that. I wouldn’t mind that at all though, so I let him do it for as long as he wished because I felt so fucking good. After a long, delicious while, he planted a long kiss on by tattoo between my breasts, a reminder of what we’d nearly done that morning, and moved down, planting open-mouthed kisses to my stomach and looking up at me just as his hand touched the button of my jeans. He said nothing, and he didn’t move, and I knew he was asking for permission. My sweet Daryl. I nodded emphatically and he immediately got to his knees between my legs. Licking his lips, he opened the button and lowered the zipper and wasted no time in lowering my jeans. I helped him by lifting my hips a little and wiggling out of it. The jeans got thrown away mindlessly, Daryl’s hands covering my spread inner thighs and firmly and slowly sliding up. My hips were already moving on their own because I needed more, I needed friction, I was sure he could see the wet spot on my panties. His hands nearly reached me then but stopped to pull them out and then I was bare in front of him, my legs spread, hips rounding. He stared, his eyes dark and heavy on me.

“Gonna eat the fuck outta you,” he groaned a second before going down on me.

I lost all thought. I was gone then, my mind blank as all there was in the world was Daryl’s mouth on me, his tongue moving inside me and then traveling up to suck my clit into his mouth. There was nothing but his groans as he ate me expertly, fingers entering me rhythmically. I covered my mouth with a hand, head thrown deep in the pillow as I fought not to just fucking scream, my breath loud enough already. He was so clearly enjoying it, moaning in pleasure for having me on his mouth, his eyes half-closed staring at me, and it’s when he saw me go over the edge, a silent scream as I contracted around his fingers and pulsed in his mouth, my hands gripping the blankets and my hips thrusting up in rhythm with the pleasure waves Daryl has eating off of me.

I felt like crying as I came down from it, it’d been so fucking good and I was still feeling it all over my body. Daryl was kissing and softly biting on my left inner thigh when I sat up and pushed him to his knees between my legs. Biting on my lip I looked up at him and I did the same to his jeans as he’d done to mine. He was breathing heavily, lips parted as he licked my taste on them. I lowered his jeans around his knees and wasted no time in grabbing the side of his boxers and lowering them. The waistband got caught on his erection and he reached down to free it, his hard cock jumping free in front of my eyes. He tried to get me to lay down then but I wasn’t having it. I wanted him in my mouth so I pushed him to keep on his knees right there.

He understood then and groaned “Sam…” like a question, like a warning, but his words turned into a low, deep moan when I took him in my mouth. A hand held on my locks, his eyes down on me. I took my time to taste him, feel every inch of his cock, learn what made his breath hitch. A hand holding his balls, I took him in deep, took a breath and then went even further, the tip of him in my throat and he cursed aloud, hissing and grabbing my hair even tighter. I slid him out just to shush him as had done to me as I smiled up at him. For some reason this made his eyes roll and his head fall back, and I took him again and kept doing it, taking him deep and sliding back again to suck firmly on the head, and then deep again. And again, and again…

“Fuck,” he moaned in a whisper. “Fuck, Sam, fuck… Stop. Stop…”

He made me let go and kept me at bay when I tried to get back. I wouldn’t care if the let go in my mouth, I wanted it. I wanted to have Daryl simply let go and come undone for me, but he didn’t let me keep on.

“Let me, Daryl,” I moaned. “I want it, let me…” I pleaded as he shoved his open shirt off of him.

“Wanna fuck you,” he as he pushed me to lay down again, moving on top of me. “Let me fuck you, Sam…”

I may have orgasmed a bit by hearing him growl it.

He half sat half knelt then, trying to get his jeans off awkwardly but was fast enough, and then I was pulling him to me with a hand grabbing his ass as the other held his cock. He let me guide him to the right place, resting his weight on one elbow as the older held up my leg around his waist.

And then he was pushing in, entering me slow and continuously, his eyes locked in mine, our mouths hanging open. When he fully entered me he seemed to lose the capability of keeping his head up, his forehead lowering to my chest and he breathed hard, little whimpers coming from him. He held himself in, deep and grabbing me tightly. Without moving he looked up at me and his expression was indescribable. He was in complete awe, his forehead sweaty, his face scrunched and he held his breath and I could feel his body tremble slightly. I was fighting to breathe normally and I wanted him to move, to fuck me senseless, but I felt this was an important moment. Somehow I knew I should let him take his time.

I was throbbing with him inside me and I’m sure he could feel it. I held his face in my hands gently to keep him looking at me and I thrusted my hip up. He breathed out and nearly closed his eyes but kept looking deep into mine and I thrusted again. I was aching for more.

“Lie down,” I told him in a whisper and he slid out of me, laying down by my side. In a moment I was on top of him, straddling and taking him all in, my hands on his chest. I started riding him slowly but never stopping, going from closing my eyes to just feel him inside me, to looking down at him. His hands traveled up my body to grab a breast as the other gripped my hip tightly as I moved them up and down on him, rising my pace.

“Oh, Daryl… So good… So fuckin’ good…”

“Fuck, Sam,” his other hand grabbed the back of my neck sending chills all over my body. “You fuckin’ amazing. You know how long I wanted this?”

“Tell me,” I got faster. “How long, Daryl?”

‘First time I wanted you…” he grabbed my hips tightly with his both hands, motioning me on him, “was the first time I laid my eyes on you.”

That had been nearly two decades ago when we were just two teenagers. I remembered well because I thought he was so cute and had one of those instant crushes because he was _really cute_. I went even faster, even stronger, his cock massaging my spot at every pass.

“Oh god… That long?” This knowledge messed up with my control.

“You were really pretty. And now you’re fuckin’ beautiful…”

“And now I’m your girl,” I told him. “And now you get to fuck me.”

He growled as he sat up, circled by back with his arm and laid me down again, his cock never sliding out of me, and then… Damn, then he fucked me. With all the passion and strength he had, with all the feelings he could convey into a hard, hot fuck. My legs were upon his shoulders as he sat on his heels, the angle making me come nearly instantly, throbbing and clenching around him. He watched me as I did and I wasn’t even starting to come down from it when he lowered my legs from his shoulders to his sides rested his weight on his hands by my sides. And then he fucked me hard, silent but with his breath labored and sweat rolling down his face, keeping his eyes open on me all the time.

But then he closed them, looking up as if to the heavens, and let go. He started to cum inside me, his face something between extreme bliss and a kind of desperation, and his whole body trembled, still thrusting into me in time with his pleasure waves, slowing down gradually. His breath came out in hard huffs, his mouth hanging open. It was beautiful to see. He looked so fucking gorgeous right now and seeing him come undone like this was wonderful. God, I wanted to see it over and over again.

I reached my hands up to his face and he opened his eyes to look down at me, looking strangely surprised by what he had just felt. I pulled him down to me, his weight on my body, I could feel his stomach against my bump but it didn’t bother me. We kissed, still breathless, my hand in his hair and traveling down his chest, ribcage and to his ass. He was still inside me and we were both throbbing the after waves. Too breathless to keep kissing, we hugged each other tightly, his hot breath against my neck. I kissed his shoulder and couldn’t stop touching him, my hands everywhere I could reach but still avoiding the biggest part of his back.

“Fuck, that was so good…” I whispered after a moment. “So fuckin’ good…”

He said nothing, just held me even tighter, an arm circling my back as he thrust into me one more time, just so he’d stay inside me like he didn’t want the moment to be over, he didn’t want to get out of me. I could feel out hearts beating fast, couldn’t know which was my heart and which was his, and we stayed like that for a long moment until they slowed down and we were breathing normally again.

He lifted his head to look down at me then and must have found my happy, relaxed expression amusing because he laughed a little, looking shy once again. His arm under my back let go and le lowered his hand to my baby bump.

“You ok?” he asked just above a whisper.

I smiled up at him, “I am… Baby is too, don’t worry.”

He nodded and looked down at where his hand rested, and then he slid down, wetly sliding out of me, and got on level with my stomach. He planted a sweet, tender kiss there as if he was now caressing the baby too, not only me.

Looking up at me he asked, “Will you let me take care of you? _Both of you_?”

I didn’t answer. There were no words. Was he asking what it felt like he was? Because it felt like he was asking if he could be part of the baby’s life. Of my life, of my baby, _our baby_. Did he want the baby to be his too? I hadn’t thought that far yet but he apparently did. Did he want this baby?

I felt my throat tight when I asked “Do you want to? Do you want this baby?”

He kept looking at me for another moment and then nodded, sure of his answer but unsure of how I’d take it. But I smiled seeing him nod and pulled him back up to me. He laid on his side, up on one elbow, looking down at me.

“It’s yours then,” I whispered looking up at him and my eyes got all wet. “We both yours.”


	28. Day 71

I should have stayed in bed.

All of us. We should all have just had a lie-in, done nothing all day. We should have stayed in bed.

I woke up in Daryl’s arms and I should have just stayed there, head pillowed in his chest, his both arms circling me tight even as he slept. My leg was thrown over his, my dreadlocks everywhere. I tightened my grip around him, breathing in, his earthy smell mingled with sweat and sex. I had to remember to wash the sheet later, our fluids were probably all over them but right now? I couldn’t care less, because Daryl was awake and turning to me, burying his head in my neck, breathing me in. I just moaned wordlessly, letting him push me to lay on my back and kiss me, slow and sensually. He settled between my legs and looked down at me with a question. Hugging him tight to me, I smiled and nodded, spreading my legs a bit more just as he started to slide in. I sighed when the filled me.

“Morning,” he said, keeping still inside me.

I smiled widely, “Morning handsome.”

Unlike last night, we were slow and soft. We made love rather than fucked. My heart swelled at the thought of Daryl making love to me. I felt like crying with our eyes locked and he moved in and out of me, and when we came it was at the same time, small cries, his forehead against mine.

God, I couldn’t get enough of him. Now I’ve had him, I wanted more if it was possible. I wanted to make love to him again just as soon as we stopped, I wanted to stay in there all day with him, doing it all day, cuddling with him, kissing him. Damn, I had it bad. No guy had ever made me feel like that, it was all so new to me, but so very welcome. It felt so good to be feeling those things that had always scared me before.

“I wish I’d known…” I said without planning it.

Daryl just lifted his head from where he’d rested it on my neck and looked at me questioning.

“That it’d be like that… With you. I’d have tried to get close to you years ago.”

He was thoughtful at that, rested an elbow on the ground propping his head up in his hand and turning to the side a little, sliding out. I could feel his fluids oozing out of me.

“Can’t know if it’d be like this.”

I looked away from him up to the tent. Outside, the sun had only just started to rise. “Yeah… I was someone else.”

“I was too. Don’t think being close to me or my brother would be good for your drinkin’ problem.”

“Why do you say that?” I looked at him again.

“’Cause you know Merle… And there was a time I nearly got into it too. Just stopped ‘cause I didn’t want to end up like my father. Helped Merle sell for a while too.”

“If we were together then… We could have either helped each other out of it or just sank down together with no way back.”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “Can’t know.”

“Just can’t believe the world had to end for us to happen,” I told him and he said nothing, just nodding a little and biting his lip. “Can I ask you somethin’?” he nodded again. “Why’d you tell me to fuck off?”

He knew what I meant. It was the first time we saw each other. I mean, I had seen him during my moving day, he was at his porch looking curiously at the people moving next door to him, but he first time we stopped and spoke to each other.

I was fourteen and had just moved there with my dad and Bobby-Jo. I hated being there. I wanted to be in Atlanta, near my friends, my school. I had just finished 9th grade and now I’d have to go to a new school, meet people all over again. Back then, at 14, I had no patience to meet new people and I was feeling like going to school less and less. I was still not addicted to anything other than cigarettes but even that young I already smoked pot with my friends.

That afternoon, over a week after moving, I was behind our new house, hiding just out of the yard on the patch of woods there was there to smoke a cigarette. There were no fences, it was all open. I had my back against a tree, out of sight if my dad came out of the house. I lit it, took a puff and looked back at the house to make sure nobody was there, and when I looked back at the road the neighbor was walking towards our houses through the woods. He startled me, I had not seen him approach. I recognized him as the boy next door who’d been looking as we moved in. He was wearing a brown tank top and was dirty from head to feet as if he’d been in the woods for a while.

“Holy shit!” I cried, a hand on my chest. “Fuck, I thought you was my dad,” and I laughed in relief saying “phew!” He said nothing, just stood there, rooted, staring at me. I took another drag and kept talking, “You live there, right?”

He nodded fast, a bit unnatural, but still said nothing. I smiled at him. A shy, cute boy that looked dangerous? Yep, I’d hit that.

“You smoke?” I asked him and he nodded again. I fished into the pocket of my sweat pants and extended the pack and lighter to him. “I’m Sam. What’s your name?”

That was a question that would actually have to make him speak and he seemed to notice that too. He ignored the cigarette and started walking towards his house, finally saying “None of ya business. Fuck off.”

Well, that was a disappointment. I thought since he was near my age I could make a friend, and he was cute, dammit, but he was an asshole. I got angry at him because I’d done nothing wrong, and decided I would never speak to him again.

“’Cause I was just stupid kid,” he answered now. “Didn’t know how to talk to people, especially with pretty girls like you. You offered me a cigarette and you was smoking like a pro and I hadn’t been able to smoke without coughing my lungs off yet. Would’ve made as ass of myself in front of ya.”

“Well… You kinda did anyways telling me to fuck off.’

“I chose to make you think of me as an asshole instead of as an idiot.”

“You don’t know I’d have thought you an idiot… I’d pro’ly have taught you to smoke right.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t know that. Thought you’d be the one to tell me to fuck off ‘s soon as I started speakin’ to ya.”

I smiled up at him. I understood. “I’d do too, I think. Was fourteen and trying to be and look cooler than I was.”

“You looked cool to me,” he said and I didn’t really believe him. “Ya did. All pretty, blondie with the eyes,” he gestured to my eyes with a finger and I laughed, “and standing in the woods like that with a cigarette and cursing and all. Too cool for an ass redneck like me.”

I turned to my side to get even closer to him, a hand on his chest, “Well, you should know that when you came down of the woods with a gun in hand and all looking dangerous and mysterious, my developing hormones went nuts.”

He shook his head, “Nah, ya just sayin’ it.”

“I mean it! But well, then you told me to fuck off and I let it go for all those years.”

He was quiet for a moment, thoughtful, a hand tracing my underboob tattoo. “Was better like that. If we got along then with all the hormones we’d be making a baby after another.”

I laughed aloud and he was surprised. It was true, hormonal and irresponsible, I’d end up pregnant on our first time.

“Well, what matters,” I said when I stopped laughing, “is we get along now and we’ll be doing all the hormones ask us too, and I can’t get more pregnant than I already am, so I guess we’re good.”

“We’re good…” he said before leaning in and kissing me.

“Can we just stay here?” I asked him lazily after the kiss. “All day… Do nothing, see no one?”

“Nah…” he said quietly. “Sophia is out there. Gotta find her.”

Shock of reality. Time to wake up. I nodded and kissed him again before we got back to the world outside.

We should have stayed in bed.

* * *

They knew. Fuck, they’d heard us last night. The little smile and raised eyebrow Andrea gave in my direction was too foreign for it to mean nothing. Rick laughed a little looking at me when I looked around questioningly and looked down at his food again. I looked at Daryl who seemed to also have noticed it. We’d tried to be careful with the noises! Or so we thought. Discretion inside a camping tent is not as possible as I’d thought. I couldn’t wait to have a real bedroom.

We were all having breakfast, eating real eggs – the perks of being in a fam, when Glenn got up from his seat, nervous, trying to say something. He called out our attention but most people didn’t even look at him. I stared at him, waiting, my wrist aching. Something bad was coming.

“The barn is full of walkers.”

There was a heavy silence for a moment when people kind of woke up and tried to understand what he meant. I lowered my half-full plate of eggs to a little camping table and got up from where I’d been sitting by Daryl, walking over to Glenn.

“You said _what_?”

“The – the, uh – The barn. There are walkers inside, locked in.”

“How do you know that? How long’ve you known that?”

“Two nights ago?” he replied as a confession. “Maggie asked me not to tell so I didn’t know what to do!”

“Fuck,” I said and then turned away to walk in the direction of the barn, yelling “Fuck!!”

I head movement right behind me, the others were following. What the fuck did he mean the barn’s full of walkers? This sentence made no sense! Why had none of us ever gone near the barn enough to notice it?

But there they were. I looked in thought a gap, Shane doing the same a little above my head, and the walkers were there, dormant, walking blindly in the dark, and there were many of them, uncountable through the gap. One of them looked directly at us, noticing the presence of the living, and Shane and I retreated.

“Do you still wanna stay?” Shane barked at Rick. “You cannot tell me you alright with this!”

“No, I’m not, but we’re guests here, this isn’t our land,” Rick seemed to be trying to keep level headed.

“This is our lives!” Shane shouted.

“Keep your voice down!” Glenn called out, we were really too close from the walkers.

“Either we go in there and do what we gotta do or we just fucking go!” Shane yelled and then found me among the others, “The house you wanna us to move to? Too fucking close to this pet herd here! Not safe at all! We gotta get going, we been talking ‘bout Fort Benning for a long time!”

“We can’t go,” Rick told him.

“Why, Rick? _Why?_ ”

Carol was the one to answer, “Because my daughter is still out there.”

Then a fight started because Shane pretty much told Carol Sophia was dead by now and Daryl got angry because he’d been nearly killing himself out there to find her, and there was the house she seemed to have been in and the doll and fuck, it was all a mess. I turned my back on them when Daryl tried to jump on Shane, yelling, someone held them, and I didn’t wanna see it. Fuck it all. I started walking back to the camp and didn’t see the end of the fight, but at some point, people started to follow me back and away from the barn.

I was already kicking earth on the fire to put it down and throwing the grill and pans to the side when they got near.

“What now?” Theo asked first.

“Now we’re leaving. We ain’t sleeping another night in this farm,” I looked around at all the others and gave the order. I didn’t want any discussion on this. I’d had enough discussing it. “Start packing, We’ll have work to do at the house so the sooner we get there, the better.”

“Did you not fuckin’ hear what I said?” Shane came over, chest puffed in an attempt to intimidate me, fast steps in my direction. “It’s too close to all the walkers! You insane wanting to keep us around!”

Daryl came over and stood between Shane and I because Shane was not stopping even as he got close to me, menacing. Shane stared angrily at him and Daryl held him on, both ready to attack again, as Rick came over to try to separate them and it was all nearly starting all over again. So stood by their side, looking up at the three fire-spitting men.

“You all with the testosterone, that’s enough!” I said loudly to make them listen. They looked at me, the same anger in their eyes, except maybe for Daryl who wasn’t angry at me specifically. I looked at Shane, staring up at him and all but yelled, “You want so much to go to Fort Benning, then just fuckin’ go! Ain’t nobody holding you here! Just _go_!” and I looked around at the others. “Anyone who wants to go with him, do as you wish!” and I looked at the enraged man again. “You’re unhappy, just _go_. We’re moving to the house.” And I got away from his face, looked around again at the stunned others and said, a bit calmer, “Come on, let’s pack.”

Nobody disagreed, they all just started moving, except for Shane who kept on his spot breathing hard, looking like he’d explode. When he spoke again, at least was something coherent. “I want someone on the lookout around the bard at every minute until we leave! Two hours each, I’ll start and Glenn’ll take over after me!”

And he stormed out. It was all quiet for a moment and my heart was pounding, so I took a breath to calm down and then marched to where mine and Daryl’s tents were. I entered mine to start collecting my clothes that were thrown all over and thrown them in the backpack and for the noises, I head Daryl was doing the same to his. I didn’t feel like talking right now, there was too much in my mind. What the fuck was Hershel thinking, keeping walkers in the barn?

But well, I knew what he was thinking. Didn’t agree at all, but I knew. He’d said on the first day we were here that he thought there was a cure. He was expecting the crew to come over and heal those walkers in there. Their bodies were decomposing, but sure, they could be healed. They’d be missing a face and all the blood from their bodies, but life would go on normally after that. For fucks’ sakes…

After I got the tent empty, putting my bag and the foldable bed I wouldn’t be using anymore near the cars where everybody else was doing the same, Daryl had already finished with his few things and was putting my tent down. His, or now ours, but hopefully we wouldn’t need to use it again, was already down on the ground.

“Hey,” Daryl said as he saw me get closer. “Going to get the horse and go out again, find her trail after the waterfall.”

“You sure you’re fine to go? Especially on the horse again?”

“I’m fine,” he said and I knew he was annoyed in general at things.

“Well then when you come back, go straight to the house, we’ll pro’ly be there already.”

“Yeah, I’ll meet you there.”

He turned to go after that, leaving the tents folded on the ground for me to deal with.

“Daryl?” I called him back and he looked at me, turning around and still taking steps backward. “Don’t die, alright?”

He nodded gravely and left, going to the stables. Noticing Rick’s absence, I asked Lori about him and she said he’d gone to talk to Hershel. Goddam stubborn men! Whatever, I didn’t care, fuck him. If he wanted to stay in this farm with his family, fine. He could stay, Shane could go to the fucking fort, whatever, I’d keep the others safe at a house with real beds for the moment before moving on.

“Sam?” I heard Maggie call me and turned to look at her. I dropped a backpack onto the pile before standing with her, drying the sweat from my forehead. “You’re leaving?”

“Yep. We’re leaving.”

“Were you not gonna tell us?”

“I don’t see why, Maggie. None of you cared to tell us you kept walkers in the barn.”

She looked down, taking a breath. “I asked Glenn not to tell you because my dad wanted it like this.”

“I know, Maggie, and he thinks they are people, and that there’s a cure. I’ll tell you something, this is insanity. Alright? This is him and all of you holding on to hope that things are not over, that those people are not dead, and I understand someone trying to keep up hope but come on! If they were people you knew, I’m sorry ‘bout what I’ll say not, but they are dead. They are putrefying on their feet. They should be buried with honors and love, and not rotting as they walk in a locked barn!”

I turned away from her because I was getting too angry and she was quiet for a moment. I was looking at the barn at the distance and saw Shane was there guarding it and Rick went to talk to him. Damn them.

“I know that,” Maggie said after a moment, her voice dripping sadness and trembling. “My stepmom and stepbrother are there, together with many other people we knew. But I get it now. A walker tried to kill me at the pharmacy and Glenn saved my life. It changed how I see them.”

I turned back to her. “I’m sorry about your mom and bother,” I said calmly. “They deserve to rest like all the other people we’ve loved and died deserve. I would never leave my dad in that situation. Never.”

She nodded, looking down. “Where you all gonna go?”

“We’ll stay at the house a few miles that way,” I pointed. “Daryl and I found it. We’ll stay until we find Sophia, and then we’ll be on our way. See where the road takes us, find a safe place.” Seeing Maggie just nod, I moved on. “I’ll talk to your father before we go. Rick’s still around him lickin’ his boots to let him stay with his family, and it’s his decision, not mine.”

I didn’t see when she walked away because I kept on with what I had to do. As the others were packing too, I looked around to count them all. Lori and Shane were speaking in the far out of the tent area, Andrea, Theo, and Glenn were packing, Dale was checking on the RV engine, Carl was just sitting around doing nothing. And then there was Daryl, coming back already. I went over to meet him.

“You didn’t go?”

“Carol told me not to.”

“Wait, _what_?”

“She don’t think Sophia’s alive anymore!” he said angry punching the air. “Said I couldn’t go ‘cause I’d get hurt again and she couldn’t lose me too!”

Wait, _what_?!

“She – what, she – Wow!” I was completely incoherent. “ _She_ can’t lose you?”

He looked at me understanding what I was thinking. “She pro’ly didn’t mean it like _that_.”

After a pfff I said, “Wouldn’t surprise me, you’re all worried about her and the girl and you – I mean, you look like _that_ ,” I pointed up and down at him.

“Stop,” he said but he was calmer but turned to look away, in the general direction of the barn.

I hummed and crossed my arms. “And how’d you take it?”

He took a few seconds to answer, “Not well.”

“Hm… Something you’d need to apologize for?”

“Pro’ly.”

“Hey…” I said softly and he turned to look at me quietly, so I approached and paced my hands on his hips, “Maybe is for the best. You sill got stitches.”

“Told you I’m fine.”

“I know…”

He lowered his head until it was near mine. He’d calmed down now. “Ready to go?”

“Almost… People are finishing packing, but Rick’s still out there kissin’ Hershel’s ass and Shane… God knows what Shane’s planning.”

“Leave’em… Their grown ass is not your responsibility.”

“I will. They’ll do whatever they wanna do.”

“Good…” he paused. “I go talk to Carol.”

“Okay.”

He seemed a bit in doubt of how to say bye to me now, unwilling to just turn away and go now that things had changed between us, and even more because we were near the others. I didn’t kiss him because I didn’t know how he felt about public affection, but after a moment he gave a very quick peck on the lips and then he was gone. Adorable.

* * *

We were ready to go. Everyone was ready to go, except for Lori and Carl who seemed to be waiting for a miracle and just stay, and Rick and Shane who were simply gone for hours now. I wanted to at least set things straight with them before talking the road, and it was time. Glenn was sitting with Maggie on the porch and the others were just around, doing nothing, waiting.

When Daryl and I went to the porch to ask Glenn if he knew something because Glenn seemed to know everything these days, Theo and Andrea followed. When I saw Shane come in our direction carrying heavy load I knew what was going on. I knew what he was gonna do. Daryl did too, because he stood by my side, eyeing Shane come and ask me “How we gonna go ‘bout this?”

That was the thing. I didn’t really think Shane was wrong about wanting to kill the barn walkers. It was not our decision, but the people in this farm were delusional and they’d end up getting killed by those they still called _people_. We’d be gone, but still near, if they escaped they wouldn’t take long to reach us at the house. And if they escaped and found Sophia somewhere on the woods, she’d be gone too. If she wasn’t yet, I mean. I had just seconds to make a decision. Shane was there, handing a rifle do Daryl, asking “You with me?” and Daryl took it but still didn’t know what to do. “You got yours?” he asked me.

“No,” I told him and the decision came. No going back. “Gimme one,” I told him and he passed me another rifle. The others kept asking Shane questions and he made a little passionate speech about how they thought this place was safe and how everyone was just as insane as in constant danger, and then started marching to the barn. Before following him I looked at Maggie, and Beth and Patricia who were at the porch, and told them, “I’m sorry. I’ll do this for your safety.”

And we left but _fuck!_ things just would stop getting worse! There was Rick in the far coming back with Hershel and Jimmy, dragging two walkers on leashes in the direction of the barn. They wanted to add more walkers there but that was enough. That was it, this was insanity! Rick was so desperate he was totally blind, completely losing his fucking mind.

But so was Shane. The way he kept on yelling and the things he was saying were completely out of control. He had to be stopped but right now he was dangerous. Everyone would better stay out of his way. He chose to show Hershel walkers were not people by shooting the one he had on the leash in the chest multiple times and it kept on standing and growling and Hershel seemed completely shocked. But when Shane started breaking the locks I was right at the front with my rifle ready.

They fell like flies, the sound of the shots ringing in our years, as walker after walker got out of the barn. Shane even shot the one Rick was holding. I could not hear the cries behind us over the shots, but I knew we were breaking this family’s hearts. These walkers had been people they knew, but they had to understand by now after seeing one of them get shot in the chest and keep going, that they were gone. They’d been gone for a long time and they deserved better.

Then it was over. The echo of the shots was the only sound for a long moment, even us who’d been shooting kind of in shock, and what the hell were we supposed to go now? What was I gonna say? I lowered my rifle, breathing hard. Hey, sorry we did exactly what you didn’t want us to do, thank you for everything, bye-bye? We were gonna go away anyway, but now any kind of good relation we could have with this family was gone.

But then…

Just when you think things can’t get any worse.

Sophia’s dead body comes out of the barn.

The shock from a second ago was nothing compared to now. I head many “no” around but I was grounded, looking at her skinny dead body focus on us and growl, a huge bite mark on the side of her neck. From the back of the group, Carol screamed and called out to her baby girl and ran. I looked back and I knew nothing was going to stop Carol from going to Sophia and holding her, even as if it would mean her death.

“Daryl!” I shouted and he looked back to see Carol coming, and he instantly held her down as she fell to the ground, sobbing, her heart shattered.

Who’d do it? It had to be done. She was coming and she’d bite the first one she could see. It had to be done but everyone was rooted, most crying, even Shane had looked down looking defeated.

It had to be done.

Letting my rifle slide to the ground, I took my hunting knife from the holster. This was Sophia, I didn’t want to shoot her. Maybe it was just pure sentimentality, but I felt like it should be more personal. Her mother was watching. I walked over to her and she saw me, focusing her dead eyes on me and she’d bite me is I wasn’t careful, if I let the tears in my eyes blind me. I reached her and held her at bay by her forehead and she growled angrily, hands trying to grab me. I rounded her, holding her head still from behind with an arm, and she struggled but she had been such a tiny girl that it was not hard to keep her still.

I looked up then and found Carol. She was crying on the ground, Daryl holding her, but she wasn’t screaming anymore. My chin trembled and I was crying but… it had to be done.

So I forced my knife into her temple. One strong, purposeful push and it was in, and she was quiet and still. I kept holding her as she went limp and lowered her as gently as I could to the ground. I laid her there and pulled the knife out, and then fell on my knees by her side, surrounded by walkers. I had no control over the tears that simply fell from my eyes, but I felt blank, empty, and couldn’t express anything though my face.

Daryl was telling Carol not to look, but how much worse could it get to her heart? If mine was shattered, how would hers be now? She got up and struggled out of his hold and she ran away alone. I had no strength to get up. I couldn’t. I had just put down what had been Sophia, the one we’d been looking for so long, who Daryl had nearly died in the efforts to find. She was here. She’s been here all along, in the barn, and nobody had known. Mr. Greene would have said something if he knew, wouldn’t he? He probably didn’t know. Maybe it was Otis who brought the walkers and then he died and couldn’t tell us. My mind was in overdrive and I just kept on crying and I knew people were slowly walking away, Beth’s cries getting far, Shane, Rick, most of the others following.

And then Daryl was kneeling by my side and holding me, I hadn’t seen him approach. His presence and his arms made me sob, but it was choked, tears flowing. He took the knife out of my hand, I had still been clutching to it, and threw it away from us. I clung to him and he held on tight, shushing me, saying it was alright, it was over.

Yes, it was over, but it was not alight.

I gripped Daryl’s arms and looked up at him. “Where’d she go?”

“I don’t know, just away.”

“Go to her?” I asked him. “Please? Just stay with her.”

He was uncertain, just looking down at me, pain and resignation in his eyes.

“Her pain’s bigger than mine now. Please stay with her?”

“You’ll be ok?”

“I will. Soon. There’s work to do.”

He nodded. It felt good that he understood me, that he didn’t insist on holding me as I cried, that he knew I was strong enough to do whatever I had to do now. So he helped me up, placed a hand on the side of my face and rubbed his thumb there, biting on his lower lip, and then turned and left.

I looked around then. There was me standing there, Dale as he paced in shock, Lori sitting with Carl as they looked at the carnage, and Jimmy and Theo standing as if waiting for instructions. From the house, still far, I saw Shane and Rick come back, quite a few paces of distance between them. From the barn, Andrea came out carrying a blanket and came over to where I was standing by Sophia. She looked at me and reached a hand to touch my shoulder, an empathetic look on her face.

“You did what you had to do. None of us could’ve done it”.

I nodded, my chin tense curving my lips, and I was thankful she’d said that. Then she knelt by Sophia and carefully and respectfully covered her body. Lori sent Carl away with Dale and Shane and Rick stood near us.

“You want us to star burying them?” Theo asked

“We’ll need a service,” Andrea said. “Carol’d what that for Sophia.”

“Jimmy?” I asked making him lookup. “Who are Mr. Greene’s wife and stepson?”

“Uh, there’s, uh,” he tried pointing but decided to go over and roll one walker from over another, a female one under it. “There’s Annete, and, uh”, he walked a little further and pointed at another one, “this is Shawn,” he looked up at me again and around at the group and corrected himself, “Was.”

“Ok… So Annete and Shawn and Sophia… We’ll dig them graves over there,” I pointed, “near Otis. The other’s we’ll take away as far as possible and… Burn’em.”

They all nodded gravely, Shane left saying he’d get the truck to move them, and we all started working.

* * *

Daryl was sitting on the RV counter, silent, looking over at Carol who as sitting at the table looking outside. Daryl looked at me as I entered and we exchanged a long look before I looked at Carol.

“Carol?” I said and she looked at me, a bit dazed. “There’s a service… For Sophia,” and Carol looked down and shook her head. I looked at Daryl and back at her. “you don’t wanna be there?”

“Why would I?” she asked.

“’Cause that’s your little girl,” Daryl answered gently.

She looked up at him, “That’s not my little girl. It’s some other… Thing.” Carol looked out the window again and I fully entered the RV, crossing in front of Daryl to sit across from her at the table. “My Sophia was alone in the woods. All this time I thought –” she paused and shook her head, her lips forming a sad, little smile. “She didn’t cry herself to sleep. She didn’t go hungry. She didn’t try to find her way back. Sophia died a long time ago,” she was silent for another moment before looking at me for long second and then saying, “But you never gave up,” and looked at Daryl, “two of you never gave up. You’d’ve given your life for her in those woods,” she looked at me with tears in her eyes. “I’ll be forever grateful,” I opened my mouth to say she didn’t owe us anything but she kept on, looking from me to Daryl and back all the time she spoke, “and you have my trust. No matter what the others want to do from now on, I’m with you, no matter what.”

My heart was swelling with love for that woman and in pain for all that was happening, and I was crying again as I reached other the table and grabbed her hand firmly, and she responded firmly. I didn’t know what to say, so I just nodded at her, accepting her trust and yearning for her friendship. After a moment when we just exchanged a look under Daryl’s gaze, I got up and puller her with me, making her stand.

“Let’s go,” I whispered. “It’s a service for who Sophia was, not for the one from the barn. It’s your baby girl, for the girl we’ve all met. Ok?”

She nodded, crying too, and I led her out of the RV. We walked her there between us, Daryl close by her side as I hugged her all the way there.

* * *

It was probably past four in the afternoon when we reached the house. Our caravan was slow on the dirt, narrow road that led to the house Daryl and I had named Cherokee House. On the bike, I clung to his back, just as I’d wished to do on the road before we got trapped by the herd, before we lost Sophia… I hugged him tighter and feeling it, Daryl let one of his hands go from the handlebar and reached back to squeeze my knee.

Everyone was silent, even Shane, no words exchanged. There seemed to be nothing more to be said. We checked the house before everyone got in, in was still clear of people or walkers, and just as silently people started looking around, putting things away, dusting couches and tables with rags, and going upstairs carrying bags to choose from the many bedrooms there were there. Daryl found a well on the land close to the house and water was brought in. We still had food from the road that we’d been able to save eating from what the farm provided us, so we’d be fine for now.

It was getting dark and there were candles lit on the coffee table in the living room, and without planning everybody gathered on the couches around it, eating from what Carol and Lori had been able to make up for us. Poor Carol, was trying to keep her mind busy…

After long minutes of silence, someone asked what now.

The question of the year.

“Now we rest,” I told them and I know I sounded grave and tired. “For tonight, maybe all day tomorrow. We sure need it.”

There were nods in solemn agreement

“We’ll need one guard at each door,” Shane said in a grave, raspy voice. He’d yelled too much today. “I’ll take the back door for the first two hours. Volunteers for the front door?”

Theo did, and as I climbed up the stairs Shane was choosing who’d be the next one to take over after them. Thankfully neither Daryl or I were put in the schedule.

I had chosen the bedroom furthest in the upstairs corridor, perhaps the smaller in the house but with a double bed that was dusty but not too bad. After cleaning myself up the best I could with a bucket of water that had been taken to the bathroom, I found it empty. With just a loose t-shirt, I looted the old wooden wardrobe and found one clean white sheet and pillowcases, which I used to replace the dusty ones that were in the bed. I couldn’t even believe I’d be sleeping in a real bed tonight. And with Daryl.

He came in then, also looking cleaner. He saw me sitting in bed then, and I probably looked the image of defeat, looking down to the floor, shoulders down. I felt small. He slowly came over and sat by my side, lowering his elbows to his knees and hanging his head. We were silent for a long moment.

‘I really thought she’d be alive…” Daryl cut the silence with a whisper towards the floor.

“I had my doubts, I confess… But I hoped… I really did hope.”

“D’you think they knew?”

“No… Ain’t nobody this… Cruel to let us keep looking knowing she was there… I don’t think they knew.”

“It was their barn…”

“Otis…” I said simply and he took a second but answered.

“Yeah, pro’ly.”

“At least now we know…”

He nodded and said nothing. I knew he was in pain because he’d dedicated so much to finding her… He’d tried to keep to positive, he’d been so hopeful and now his heart had broken.

“You okay?” he asked me.

I felt my throat tightening. He was hurting but still taking care of me. My beautiful Daryl… I sighed shakily and let my head fall to his shoulder. “Not really… But I’ll be fine. I don’t think we did anything wrong. We were wrong thinking she was alive, but we didn’t do anything wrong. We did all we could. If she’d been out there, you’d have found her.”

Daryl looked sideways at me, still all but curved on himself. “You really think so?”

“I know so.”

He sat up then, turning to face me in bed and rested a hand in my cheek. I closed my eyes, breathing out, trying to allow myself to relax and believe my own words with my heart. He kissed me gently on the lips, never going further than that, maybe afraid I wouldn’t want him tonight. But I did… I wanted him so we’d both be able to feel something _good_ in such a terrible day. So I deepened the kiss, my arms circling his shoulders to bring him closer, and he seemed to understand and kissed me back the way I wanted him to. The kiss I was getting to know, slow, deliberate, firm. The sexiest kiss I’d ever had.

We laid across the bed and he rested on top of me, and right then we didn’t even try to control our desire anymore. It was the hot, breathless moaning kisses, we needed each other, needed to be touching, to feel something good, to forget everything else.

Daryl took my t-shit off me and found me bare under it. I hadn’t even bothered on putting on bra and panties after I washed, I knew we’d need each other tonight. By his groan, I got that he approved. He moved so quickly I nearly missed it; he slid to the floor, on his knees by the bed, grabbed me by my thighs and pulled my body to the edge of the bed, spread my legs and covered me with his mouth.

I couldn’t believe I was so lucky to find that, other than all of the qualities Daryl had, he also loved eating pussy. And damn, did he do it well. I was like he was feasting, not just eating. Savoring. My feet up in the air, a hand gripping the sheets and the other on his hair, I permitted myself to just feel, let all the pain and guilt disappear. It felt so amazing that I wanted Daryl to feel the same, I want to give him what he was giving me.

He had one hand pumping two fingers inside of me and the other arm extended to hold one breast on his hand. I looked down at him to see those beautiful blue eyes him staring up at me, eyelids half-closed.

I hissed, “Fuck Daryl, you’re so good!”

His eyes smiled up at me, only his eyes because his mouth kept working his miracle. Soon after he got on his feet making me look confused at him. Looking at me he put his two fingers in his mouth and sucked them before saying “Turn around. On your fours.”

A chill ran all over my body and here was no way in the world I was not gonna turn around a get on my fours for him. So I did, crawling to the center of the bed, breathless, fully expecting and hoping that he was gonna enter me not and fuck me ‘till tomorrow, but he didn’t. He kept on what he was going, now from behind. My head fell to the mattress and I swear it was like I could pass out at any moment now. I’m not sure even sure when my orgasm started or for how long it went, all I know is I was lost in it, seeing stars under my eyelids, my legs going weak. I buried my head in a pillow and screamed into it, unable to hold it anymore, my whole body trembling.

When I came to myself he had stopped and was running his hands over my ass and back, saying something I didn’t even assimilate. I fell on my side, breathing hard and looked at him with glassy eyes.

“You’ll end up killing me one of these days,” I told him, making his smile that little sideways smile of his as he got up from the bed to stand by it. Trembling, I sat up and crawled to the edge of the bed. He’d tossed his shirt away and was working on the buttons of his jeans but I batted his hands away to do it myself. “Will you let me this time?”

He looked down at me, “You wanna?”

“Yeah.”

“You sure?”

“Fuck yeah,” I said when I lowered his jeans and his boxers at the same time, setting his cock free right in front of me. “Sit down.”

He did and took his jeans off from around his ankles and I knelt in front of him. Before I could do what I wanted, though, he caught my face in his hand and pulled me up for a kiss. I could taste myself on him as we kissed for a long moment, my hands on his cock working up and down. When I finally took him in my mouth, Daryl rested his weight on his hands behind him and let his head fall back, just feeling. It’s what I wanted, to have him feel, just feel and not think, not suffer. He was rock hard in my mouth, I could trace his veins with my tongue and I did all I wanted, I took him deep in my throat, I sucked on his head, I traced every inch of him with my lips and tongue, I massaged and kissed his balls, all the while making Daryl breath harder and harder, and then start moaning losing control over his voice. I sped up, taking him in and out and his hips started thrusting forward on their own.

“Sam… oh, fuck, Sam…” he cried and I throbbed just to hear it. He grabbed my hair and his other hand was buried in the sheet. “Gonna cum… Fuck, oh I’m cuming Sam!”

And oh, he did. I took him halfway and sucked him hard and felt him spurt into my mouth. I swallowed one after the other, taking him all in, feeling his pulse and throb in my mouth. I cleaned all of him as he finished, every trace of it. He fell back on the bed, his hands rising to his head as I climbed in by his side, and we both laid there, side by side. It’d been so hot do blow Daryl until he came that I was ready to keep going all night, but give the man a break.

I woke up at some point during the night with him moving me to lay on the pillows, for we’d been across the bed naked and it was getting chilly. He covered us and spooned me tight, his face buried on my neck, and we slept again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, Kylesmom!


	29. Day 72

It was like the world hadn’t ended. It felt like a peaceful Sunday morning, soft light pouring into the bedroom, silence, peace. Daryl’s chest against my back, his slow breathing tickling my neck. It was like the world hadn’t ended, except that no Sunday morning had ever felt that good before that. Was it even Sunday? Not that it’d matter anyway. At this moment I didn’t permit any memory from yesterday to invade my brain. I didn’t allow any worry about the future to barge into our bed. Now, it was just us.

I guess he woke up at the same moment I did, because he moved them, hugging me tighter to his chest and whispered “Hey…”

“Morning,” I whispered back as I turned my head to get closer to him and he gave me a long kiss on my cheek. “I can easily get used to waking up like this…”

“Damn right,” and he pulled my hips to him so I could feel his erection against my ass. “Wanted to be inside you last night,” he moved his hip against me, his cock sliding up on my skin and my body responded to him immediately, “Wanna be inside you…”

I only positioned myself better as an answer, letting him find my entrance. He stayed there though, his enlarged head teasing me but not going anywhere.

“Tell me you want it,” he whispered into my ear a moment before licking it, a chill running all over my body at that.

“I want it, Daryl...”

He was kissing my neck now, “What’d you want?”

“You… I want you inside me,” and I tried taking him in by pushing against him but he still held me at bay. Oh, he liked games, then… Interesting.

“Lemme see how much you want it,” he teased before sliding his hand from my hip to between my legs. “Fuck, so wet…”

“I am… I want you Daryl,” and I moaned breathlessly because now he was moving two fingers over my clit. “Please…”

“Damn, Sam…” and he pushed in just a bit, only the head, and stopped.

“No, don’t stop, please!”

“You so fucking hot pleading like this,” he sped up his fingers on me, my desire rising with it. God, I wanted him…

“Fuck me Daryl… Please fuck me.”

He laughed softly in my ear, “Nah, wanna hear you like this a bit more…”

“Fuck, you’re killing me…”

“Got any idea how fuckin’ hot you are?”

“Ya think I’m hot? You’re so hard for me,” he entered me a bit more at that, suddenly and strong, making me “Oh fuck yes!” but took it out again.

“Fuck, you want it bad don’t you?”

“You know I do… I know you want it to, please love just fuck me!”

He did so suddenly that I cried out as he pushed in fully, holding my hip flush against him, his fingers buried on my skin, his other arm pillowing my head curved to hold my hair tight and he groaned into my ear. He fucked me so good then, his rhythm never faltering, moaning and hissing behind me, his fingers making my clit sing in pleasure.

“Tell me… Tell me Sam…” he said in my year and I didn’t know exactly what he wanted me to say, so I went for what I was feeling.

“I want you so much Daryl… I want you all the time. I want it all with you. All, all of you.”

“You got me, darling,”

I reached an arm back to hug his head against me and turned my head to look at him from over my shoulder, “Then say it… Tell me you’re mine,” I asked him, a sudden need to listen to those words, to know this was _my man_.

He raised his pace, breathing hard in pleasure, his eyes locked on mine, and moaned, “I’m yours. You got me. I’m all yours.”

“Oh god, Daryl!” and I was coming, those words just adding to the nearly overflowing pleasure, and he came with me, fucking me hard, groaning and moaning against my neck, my name rolling out with it, his hand now still, cupping me and holding me in place as we throbbed together.

It was like the world hadn’t ended. It was like it was just starting.

* * *

We went downstairs together. Crossbow in hand, knives on our waistbands, my double gun holster back in place. I had missed it, got too used to wearing it before the farm. We stopped right in front of the kitchen entrance. Daryl looked at me, reached out for my hand and gave it a squeeze with a nod and a little smile before leaving the house through the back door. I was smiling when I entered and saw Lori, Andrea, and Maggie in there, staring at me, and I felt like I was in 10th grade when with all my friends seeing me with a boy.

“What?” I asked, avoiding their looks

“Why, nothing, Mrs. Dixon!” Maggie answered smiling

“I thought you said there was nothing there,” Andrea quipped.

“There wasn’t,” I answered as I sat on one unsteady chair by the kitchen table. “Well, I mean… There’s always been something, but it not really. Just… There is now.”

“We know, honey, we all _know_ well there is something there now,” Lori said trying to sound disapproving but still smiling.

I knew they’d heard it.

“Oh god…” I said hiding my head in my hands. “Were we that loud?”

“Not that loud, but well… We heard,” Andrea said from across the table as she started beating a bowl of eggs.

“Yeah, you know it’s hard to keep quiet when it’s really good,” Lori said raising her eyebrows at me, and I got that there was a question there, and Andrea and Maggie were looking at me with the same expression.

“I ain’t telling!” I laughed and they did too. “Get to your own conclusions by the little you heard.”

“Well, he’s good then,” Andrea said looking at the others as if informing them of her conclusion.

“Hey!” I said throwing dishcloth at her, making her laugh. “You all, stop thinking about my man’s penis.”

They laughed aloud at that and so did I. Strange sound, something that hadn’t been heard for such a long time in this group. And it occurred to me that I was laughing and joking with Andrea, which was even weirder. But it felt good. I liked those women, I just wished Carol was here too, laughing with us, but I knew it would be a long time until she was able to smile again.

This thought sobered me up.

“Did anyone check on Carol?” I asked when we all got silent again.

“I did,” Lori told me as she took the bowl of beaten eggs from Andrea. “She’s alright, I mean… As alright as anyone can be in her place… She’ll just have a lie-in.”

“Right…” I nodded, looking down. “Let’s just let her sleep and rest for as long as she wants. We can stay one more day here, regroup, and then we’ll go.”

I saw Maggie look down sadly at that. Getting up, I stood facing her and said, “Hey, honey.”

“Hey…” she looked at me, her green eyes sad but firm. “Can we talk?”

Nodding, I lead her out of the kitchen and the house. There was an old picnic table in the yard under a tree and we sat there.

“Did you bring those eggs?” I started by asking her.

“I did.”

“That’s great, thank you, Maggie… But you know you didn’t have to. After all that happened.”

“I know. I wanted to. Worried about you guys.”

I was quiet for a moment, thinking. “I’m worried about you guys too. What you watched happening yesterday… Gotta break anyone’s heart.”

“I think we all made mistakes,” Maggie told me. “I don’t think you guys acted right in opening the barn and shooting them. Things could have been solved in a more peaceful way. But I also know we were wrong in not telling you about the barn before. If you knew, maybe you could have asked yourselves if Sophia maybe was in there and checked, maybe you’d know the truth a long time ago.”

“True… I think I’d have thought of that, but yesterday, during the time we knew before opening it, I didn’t. I should have… “

“It’s done now,” Maggie said shaking her head. “It had to be done, I see it now. After that walker attacked me in the pharmacy and then the way Lou Bush was shot in the chest and kept on going...” Maggie shivered at that. “I know there’s no way back. I know there’s no cure, and my father’s starting to see it too.”

“It must be hard to let go of hope like that. And I’m sorry you had to see your loved ones like that.”

“I know… It’s all wrong. You all, and us. But either way, I wished you didn’t have to go.”

“Too much would have to be different for us to stay, Maggie. We would impose too much. I would have to make changes there and decide things because we’ve been out there, we’ve survived out of the haven that farm is for now, and your father hasn’t. He can’t make the correct decisions in this new reality without having knowledge and experience in it. I didn’t want, and I still don’t want to impose things to him on his own land. What I need to do is think of my people’s safety. They come first, you know? And what I’ll say might not sound good, but as he told me himself: there is _my people_ , and there is his people. He’s the one who makes the decisions for you, not me.”

“You told me before you don’t think we’re safe.”

“Yes, and I reaffirm that. That haven there? Could be gone in a blink of an eye.” Maggie looked down at the worn wood of the table and nodded sadly. “I’m sorry about you and Glenn. I know this between you could be more than just a casual thing…”

She looked up at me, lips night but nodding. “Yeah… I like him. Glenn is… He had the gentlest, biggest heart I know. He’s just such a good man, and so brave, and I do like him very much.”

I smiled, “I know. Glenn is a great guy, you’re lucky to have found him, especially in this new world. We all love him and he is a crucial part of this group. But Maggie… He’s a free man. He can stay if he wants to. We’d all miss him, I’d miss him, but ultimately it would be his decision.”

She just nodded, thoughtful, before saying, “I wish you’d stay too, Sam.”

“I ain’t, Maggie… We ain’t staying. Too much has happened.”

“And it’s not safe,” she completed my thought.

“Right now, as it is… It ain’t safe.”

Silent and looking down, she nodded and got up after a moment. “I’ll go see Glenn.”

She put a hand on my shoulder as she passed me to go back to the house, and I knew we were good, but I’d probably never see her again, not unless many things changed in a day as we stayed or, highly unlikely, she went away with us. Which was a shame because I liked Maggie very much.

Getting up from the picnic table I saw Daryl approach me as if he’d been waiting for our conversation to be over to come to me. I leaned back on the table and watched him come.

“Alright?” he asked as he stood close to me and I looked up at him.

“Fine… Just setting things straight with Maggie… After what happened.”

He nodded with his lip-biting before saying, “There’re eggs in the kitchen, you should eat.”

“I will. Did you eat?”

“Just did. Goin’ out hunting, see if I can get you a nice dinner,” he paused. “And Lori, she needs it too.”

I smiled at how thoughtful he was. “Okay. Still waiting for that veal.”

With a little smile, he took the last step between us and leaned down to hiss me, holding the crossbow in one hand and cupping my face with the other. I hugged him by his waist and we kissed deeply for a minute or two, and then he let go, lowered his hand to my stomach, resting it on the baby for a moment and planted a quick kiss on my forehead, before turning to go.

I was still lightheaded from his kiss, smiling goofily when I said, “Don’t die out there, okay?”

He looked at me over his shoulder saying “I won’t,” and was gone.

* * *

Carol still hadn’t come down when we all had breakfast together and I asked if Andrea could go up to bring her some if she was awake. She came down with a full plate saying Carol was still asleep. I helped the others clean the kitchen and organize it a bit because hopefully, we’d be cooking some meat later.

When I left the kitchen, I head a mild discussion coming from one of the rooms nearby and followed it. Rich and Shane were there, being watched by a quiet Carl.

“I’m telling you, Rick, been telling you for what feels like years: Fort Benning!”

“You’re right you’ve been saying in for a long time, and nothing ever worked out to get us there,” Rick answered him.

“And you know why!”

I asked, “Why, Shane?” from behind him, making him turn startled. He recovered quickly, though.

“Because of the decisions that’re being made.”

“We’ve been through this, Shane…”

“No,’ he said firmly, “ _You_ ’ve been through this. _You_ stated what _you_ thought about it. Not sure who made you the decision-maker of this group.”

“It ain’t a dictatorship, Shane. People can disagree and go a different way if they wish, but you’re the only one I see still insisting in Fort Benning.”

“Because it’s the best way to go!” he yelled and Rick got up from the couch.

“It ain’t the best way to go!” I retorted just as firmly. “I told you, you can go if you believe this so much. You can go! But I will not rely in the military. I will not put our lives in the hand of an authority that hasn’t done shit for us so far. Nearly three months, Shane, and where the fuck are they? And you want to go looking for them? They all abandoned us to our own luck, so we will make out own luck!”

He was breathing hard, angry like he’d constantly been in the past few days, and stared at me silently for a long moment. I held his gaze, not allowing him to intimidate me. Then he turned to look at Rick, who’s been standing there with his hands on his hips.

“How about you? Where do you stand, Rick?”

“I’m with Sam in this, Shane.”

Shane nodded shooting Rick the same look he’d given me, and after a moment he stormed out of the room. I looked down, my heart pounding because as much as I was sure I was right, Shane was a big, strong man and that look… There was something in that look that knotted my stomach. I looked up at Rick and nodded at him, thankful. I had Rick on my side now, and I’m sure he had considered every aspect of it, his wife, son, the upcoming baby, and he still was going to stand with me. I was glad.

A minute later I saw Shane leave the house and the area with one of the cars. I asked myself if he’d come back, and if it would make any difference to me.

* * *

In the afternoon I left the house alone with my thoughts. People seemed comfortable in this house. It was not great, but it had potential. It was spacious, everyone had found a good place to sleep, Daryl and I had our own bedroom, Lori, Rick, and Carl too, the others had been comfortable as well, there were other rooms in the house we could turn into private bedrooms for the others. There was no running water but with the well outside we could make do, we could even flush the toilets with buckets of water, and the old wood stove we’d been able to cook breakfast with was a great asset. We’d need to fix the doors and windows, fortify it, and then there would be the hardest part: surrounding the area with walls. If we managed to do that, maybe we could just stay. I knew people agreed with my plans, but it was evident nobody wanted to be on the road again. I was trying to find ways in my mind to make it not have to happen. Maybe we could keep the Greenes as neighbors and just… Stay.

The thoughts took me to the woods that surrounded the house. If we put down some trees we could use their trunks as walls. It would take a lot of trees and a lot of work, but we could do it. I’d need lots of support from the others and lookouts until the work was done, but it wasn’t impossible. There were a few clearings in the area and there was a lot we could do. Build sheds, maybe cabins out there, so everybody wouldn’t have to live in the same house.

Crunching leaves under careful steps took me out of my thoughts and I looked around trying to find the source. For a moment I didn’t and my hand was already on my knife when Daryl appeared from among the trees, something big hanging from his back and he crossbow half-up, ready to take aim. Seeing it was me, he lowered it instantly.

He looked damn hot. Like a caveman bringing the food. He dropped it to the ground and I saw it was a turkey. We’d be having a damn fine diner tonight. But now, I cared more about the way he was looking at me, head to toe and back to my eyes.

“You alone out here?” he asked taking deliberate steps towards me.

“Not anymore,” I said as I gave him the same look and damn, wasn’t the air charged.

He practically charged at me, surprising the fuck outta me but it was so damn welcome. He kissed me hard as if we’d been apart for weeks and got me all melt from him.

“Got any idea what you doin’ to me?” he asked as he kissed down my neck. “Can’t stop think’ ‘bout you. Don’t know how I got the turkey, all I could think ‘bout was your pussy in my mouth…. And how you scream my name when you’re cumin…”

“I know… I want you all the time. Could fuck you all day,” and I lowered my hand to cup his cock through his jeans making him hiss and jerk against my hand. “There’s no one around,” I told him.

He said nothing, just pushed me against the nearest tree and kissed the fuck out of me, his hands everywhere, cupping my breast, my ass, opening my jeans. He lowered it only enough to make room for his hand to slide under my panties and rub his palm there.

“All ready for me…” he groaned in my ear and I started working on his fly. “Turn around”.

I did and, as he freed his cock, I lowered my jeans to my knees and bent over, hands on the rough tree bark and then, so good, I felt the head of his cock against my entrance.

“Say it?” he asked. He was always gonna ask for permission, I was sure of that. Fuckin hot, adorable man.

“Fuck me Daryl, please –”

I couldn’t even finish my plead and he was in, deep and strong, holding me flush to him by my hips. It was a quick, hot and heavy fuck that got us both coming in like five minutes. The arousal of the danger of getting caught added urgency to it, we both looking around even as we fucked, and it was so fucking good that I thought immediately I wanted more of it. I wanted him in the privacy of our bedroom, on top of his bike, out in the open in the woods, everywhere. I couldn’t get enough of Daryl.

I had a secret in my panties as we both walked into the house, Daryl bringing the turkey. His seed was still flowing out of me, I could feel it, and I thought strange how good it felt.

Everyone was happy with the turkey and thanked Daryl for bringing it. He dismissed it, though I thought I saw some satisfaction in his eyes and went upstairs. I wanted to follow him, keep going, but got distracted noticing Carol was in the kitchen with the others, now discussing with them how they’d prepare it because it was a huge bird and roasting it in the oven would take too long. They were deciding to cut it to pieces and make it fried or maybe a stew when Shane came back to the house. He dropped a plastic bag of pharmaceuticals on the table mumbling something about how he’d found a drugstore out there, and left again.

He was not normal.

* * *

Daryl was already sitting in bed, back against the headboard and both legs stretched on the mattress when I entered the bedroom. I’d been cleaning up in with the bucket of water in the bathroom – we’d need to come up with a better bathing solution if we stayed in the house. I closed the door behind me and stood there, looking at him as I tied my dreads up, and only when he asked “ _What_?” I noticed I was smiling.

So I crawled into bed and got close to his face, “You got us turkey. You’re a provider, you know that?”

With a pfff he pulled me to sit by his side, an arm circling my back, “Didn’t get it for them… Got it for you,” and he paused, I said nothing because I didn’t believe him. He did care for the others. “Maybe Lori too, and Carol ‘cause she’s sad…”

At that, I smiled up at him, “Right. “Cause you don’t care ‘bout the others.”

“Care ‘bout you.”

“And not a little about the others?”

“Shut up,” and he pushed me to bed, rolling over me making me laugh aloud. “Care more ‘bout you than anyone else.”

“I know you do…” I said quietly looking up at him, my arms circling his shoulders. “You make me feel it. You’re all contained and closed up with the others, but me? I feel it. I feel protected… Cared about.”

He was quiet listening to me, and as I said it he slid to the side, propped up on his elbow, and looked down at me. He had a weird look on his face, seemed confused somehow.

“You feel… Protected. With me?”

“I do… You seem surprised.”

He cleaned his throat and looked down. “Kinda am…”

“Don’t see why. You been protecting me and having my back since the beginning, since D and Owen. Never left my side. I feel that you care for me.”

Quiet and still not looking at me, he rested a hand on my stomach and looked at it for a long moment before asking in nearly a whisper, “Did ya mean it?”

His hand on my baby bump told me what he was talking about. I reached for his face and cupped it gently to make him look at me. “I wished it was yours. Still do. So if you tell me you want it… He’s yours. I’ll be lucky to have a baby with you.”

His eyes were suspiciously shinnying when he asked me “He?”

I just nodded. I’d been feeling it was a boy. Daryl lowered his head no my chest, his thumb caressing my stomach. Very quietly, he asked “Why?’ in such an open, pained voice that I felt my heart swell with love for him.

“Because I see in you all the things they never allowed you to see your whole life,” I was holding his head with both hands. “Because you and I both know exactly how _not_ to treat a child and I know you’ll make a great dad,” and I hugged his head to me, and kissed his hair, “Because I love you.”

His hand froze on me and I suspect he stopped breathing. For a moment he didn’t move, but then he raised his head and looked up at me, staring at my eyes.

“I mean it,” I said, even though I got nervous. I was sure he cared about me, that he had my back, that he had feelings for me, but come on, I was just a human with a heart and I’ve just opened it to a guy I’d been dating for what, three days? My heart sped up a bit, afraid of how he was going to react, afraid this would be too much for him. “And I know you have trouble believing yourself worthy, but if you trust me, then please believe me when I say you deserve to be loved. That you’ll be a great dad for this boy, and that I love you.”

Hand still on the baby, Daryl turned to his side, resting on his elbow, looking at me. “There’s stuff you don’t know ‘bout me.”

I lifted an arm to pillow my head, trying to get comfortable. “Wanna tell me?”

He shook his head sadly, “You won’t love me…”

“I will. I know you got a troubled past, but I got too. You ain’t perfect, but I ain’t either. It don’t matter to me. This life is what matters, what he got now. I love you for who you are now to me, and all the bad things that you gone through or did before, they are who you are now. My fucked up story makes me who I am today, right? And you like me either way –”

“Love you,” he corrected me and my heart nearly exploded. He raised his hand from my stomach to cup my face. “You think I’m worth it? I’ll have it, and I’ll do all I can to really be.”

We made love again that night, the third time that day, but it was different. It was like it was the first time as if we were rapidly changing our short relationship. It was as if the world hadn’t ended; it was just beginning.


	30. Days 73 to 76

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are difficult times ahead...

Day 73

There was a quick knock on the door, the signal we’d agreed on to wake someone up when it was time for their watch. It was mine. Daryl woke up instantly as well, ready and attentive.

“Shh, it’s okay,” I told him and I sat up. “It’s just my turn to watch, don’t wake up.”

“You’re on tonight?” he asked, his voice sleepy and tired.

“Yeah, a couple of hours. Gonna be back at four to sleep some more.”

“’Kay… Careful out there.”

“I will. Just sleep, love…”

He answered with a sleepy hum and was probably already asleep when I quietly left the room. The house was silent and dark, it felt peaceful. The blue night light coming through the windows was enough to illuminate my way downstairs and to the back door.

There was nobody there. I looked back at the corridor and at the front door in the end of it, and there was Shane, standing with his side to me, staring. There was something in his eyes. He was on his spot on the lookout as agreed, but… I don’t know. There was just _something_.

“Who’s switching with you?” I asked quietly, just loud enough for him to listen to me from across the house.

“My shift will be done in an hour. Dale will come down.”

I nodded, looked at him for another moment, and turned to get out through the door. The night was a bit chilly and it felt good after the heat of the day. Crickets were singing and everything was just so quiet, so still, and there was a smell of wildflowers in the air, it was hard to imagine the way the world was now. It all seemed to be so alright, so why the hell did my wrist ache like that? Why was my heart tight as if something terrible had happened?

From out on the backyard, I looked into the house and Shane wasn’t there on my line of sight anymore. He was patrolling. Just patrolling. I’d never been afraid of Shane before, why was I now? I could defend myself and Shane knew it, he saw what I did to Ed. Given, Shane was stronger and bigger… And trained. But why was I thinking about it? He was not about to attack me. I was just being stupid.

“We never get much of a chance to be alone, do we?” his voice came from the corner of the house. He had rounded it, leaving his post, and was walking slowly towards me, both thumbs on his front pockets, the other fingers resting by his groin.

“Your door’s unguarded, Shane,” I told him, my voice steady and my wrist burning.

“It’s fine, we can both see it from here,” he said as he stopped in front of me and looked into the house where the front door was visible at the other end of the hallway. “It’s alright. Night’s quiet. We can talk.”

“What you wanna talk about?” I said turning more to him but stepping back. I was uncomfortable with his proximity.

“You ‘n I, Sam? Never seen eye to eye, have we? Since the beginning, on the road.”

“You can put it that way.”

“But one thing we got in common… We both want what’s best for the group, even if we disagree on how to do it.”

“You seem more focused on just a part of the group lately,” I said and regretted it. He was threatening, if not with his words, with his posture, and I was saying this kind of stuff to him? Bad move, Sam.

“You know Lori’s pregnant, right?” I nodded. “It’s my baby.”

“She says differently.”

“No matter what she says. It’s mine.”

“It’s hers in the first place, Shane.”

“Yeah…” he nodded, a dangerous smile on his face and I dared one more step back but he followed it. “Thing is, Samantha… Baby’s mine. Lori’s mine. And this whole fuckin’ group’s mine. And you’re out.”

Not a chance to tell him my name is not Samantha. Not a chance to step away from him. Not a chance to react. A rag was out of his pocket and his hand was pressing it against my mouth and nose, his other hand cupping the back of my head, holding it in place.

Chloroform.

I fought. My arms were hitting him all around, my legs kicking and I was holding my breath but it didn’t seem to matter because the smell and the effects were happening anyway, and I screamed, called out for Daryl, except that I’m not even sure I was really screaming or if it was just in my head. Things didn’t fade away slowly into darkness, it was sudden. In a millisecond I was fighting, in the other, I was not. I was… Nothing. Nowhere.

* * *

Where the fuck was I?

I was lying down, it was night, my head hurt like a motherfucker. It was all I knew for a long moment. Turning my head to the side hurt a lot, my eyes were burning, and what the fuck had happened?

Oh, right. Shane.

 _Son of a bitch_.

I looked to my right side, a huge effort and my eyes took a moment to focus, but when they did, there was the fucker. Shane was up, a few steps away from he, and he was dealing with two walkers. If there were walkers around, I’d need to protect myself. I patted my waistband, nothing. Raised my hands to my shoulders, the holster wasn’t there. I was bare of any weapons. I had to get out of there before Shane killed the two walkers and could get back to me, but just as I tried to lift my head, what I saw coming right at me was a third goddam walker, a big male, and he was one of the worst I had seen. In the second before he fell over me growling a drooling, I saw his stomach was cut open and there were darkened, fetid guts coming out of the gash. He was on top of me then, my mind was too slow to jump up before he did. I’d have been much faster without the chloroform. The thing had its hands on the grass by my head and was growling and hissing trying to bite my face off. With no weapons, I screamed as I raised my hands to its face, pushing it up and away from me by its hollow cheeks but even dead it was strong, the instinct to feet giving it all the strength it needed.

I couldn’t kill it. I had nothing, my mind was fuzzy, I felt weak.

I was gonna die.

As a last resource, I pushed my thumbs in the walker’s eyes. It kept on just as it was before, no sign of pain or the natural desperation any person would feel with someone pushing fingers into their eyes. It just wanted to eat me. I kept on pushing, deeper and deeper until I felt the eyeballs pop and some sort of putrid liquid fall on my face, and still, I kept on, keeping my mouth closed so I would swallow any of it, and deeper, stronger, until I felt my thumbs entering a mushy goo, a disgusting noise, and the walker stopped. That liquid and blood rained down on my face, neck, chest, I was covered in it, but the walker was dead and it hadn’t bitten me. Breathing hard, exhausted already, I pushed its body off of me and it rolled to the side.

But then Shane was there, standing up and looking down on me, also bloody and I hoped he’d been bitten. I tried to get up but he held me down. I fought him off but he sat on my stomach and held me down.

“Just give in, bitch,” he said with rage dripping from his tone, holding my hands down to the ground. “You took everything from me. Took everything I had. Spoke some shit ‘bout me to Lori, I know it was you, she _liked_ me and then she didn’t and it was _you_! I should have never asked you to go with us. I should have left you to die on that road!”

I don’t know what I was screaming, I just know I was, and I was trying to grab him with my legs but he was too big and I was not on my right mind and I couldn’t. I had trained that so many times before, I knew I could do it but right now I was helpless.

“You’ll be found dead. I tried to save you but you got bit, all they will see is you waking around, undead. Not getting on my fuckin way again, bitch!”

“Like you did to Otis?!” I shouted up at him and his hands instantly let go of my wrists and found my neck.

“You got me all figured out, don’t’ ya? Yeah, just like I did to Otis. Greater purpose.”

He squeezed my neck and I couldn’t breathe anymore. My face felt like it was going to burst, I fought for air, fought to get him to let go but nothing worked. He was staring right at my eyes as he choked me, he was going to watch me die and take his pleasure in it.

I was dying.

I don’t know if people’s lives pass right in front of their eyes when they are dying… Mine didn’t. All I thought was of the present, just tonight, just Daryl telling me loved me. Just what my death would do to him, and that my baby was dying with me, not even a chance to live and fight and it was so fucking unfair.

Desperation is not a word clear enough to describe what I felt being strangled like that. I kept fighting, all I needed was a breath and I might have the strength to fight Shane of, but the breath didn’t come. I was never coming again.

There was a far, faint sound that seemed like someone shouting Shane’s name. But I don’t know. I was probably never gonna know because I was about to die.

Everything disappeared around me and I was no more.

* * *

I thought maybe it was the afterlife, because it was so confusing and fuzzy that I didn’t recognize anything at first. Took me seconds, maybe minutes, to start to understand I was still there, laying on the same meadow. My head and my throat seemed to be on fire, they hurt so much, and that was what made me understand I had not died. Next thing I noticed was the sounds. Moans and groans of walkers all around me, on every side, just as I laid there, and I risked a glance to the side.

My heart clenched in my chest and coldness filled my stomach. I was in the middle of a herd. I was frozen, paralyzed, couldn’t move another muscle, just my wide eyes as I looked everywhere I could. Nobody alive, just the dead and me, and there seemed to be thousands of them. Some were dormant, walking around in circles, but most were going in the same direction, following each other to an unknown destination. After what felt like hours I dared to turn my head to the other side and it was only then I knew I wasn’t alone.

Or, well, I actually was. Because he was dead.

Shane was fallen right by my side, his head turned to me, eyes wide open, the rage froze in his dead face, and on his temple there was a shot. Somebody had shot him. So somebody had been there. Somebody saw him, saw what he was doing, and shot him. Maybe somebody was still around.

This made me get the strength to sit up. Before, though, I looked up at the sky, took a deep breath, as deep as I could with the stench, and lifted my head, looking down at myself. I was covered in blood and guts and I remembered the walker I’d killed before and realized that damn walker had most likely saved my life because the others couldn’t detect me now. I smelled just like them. And just as I thought it…

The first walker found Shane. He wasn’t transformed, so even dead he still smelled great to the walkers. It started eating him and chewing loudly. I froze, they were right by me, inches away, and another walker, then another, and if I stayed there I was gonna get buried in them. I had to go.

Even in panic, I sat up as slowly as I could for them not to notice I had the motion of the living. Everything hurt. It was like I was beaten up and not just doped and strangled. Every muscle of my body complained, my head screamed, but still I got up to my feet and started walking away. Looking ahead to where the herd was going, I finally understood where I was.

The farm. Why had Shame brought me to the meadow at the farm? I mean, _why_?! That he’d wanted to kill me I got it, he hated my guts, but why the farm? Guess I’d never know because he was just turning into carcass right by my feet. But what I was seeing bothered me much more. This immense herd had reached the farm, there was movement there and I started hearing shots but it was all too far for and dark for me to recognize anybody. I kept walking and I was unsteady, feeling weak like I’d faint from hurting and from panic at any moment.

But you know when you think things could never get worse but they just… Do? A moment you never see coming but changes everything in your life, your future?

Someone screamed. Loud, desperate.

“NO!!!”

It was Daryl. I found him by following the sound of his painful scream, and he was still screaming it. I saw him. He was running to me, to this herd all around me.

_No, Daryl, please, it’s too dangerous. They don’t see me but they’ll see you!_

Then there were people holding him and I saw Rick, Glenn, and Theo stop him and he fought them like hell to get away, to go to me, his screams turning to cries… And it hit me.

He thought I was dead. He thought I was one of them.

_No, no, fucking no!_

The others were dragging him away, most likely saving his life, but then they were going, fleeing from the herd, movement ahead at the farmhouse as others did too. They were gonna leave, they had too, but I was there, and I was fucking alive!

I started walking faster, as fast as I could, which wasn’t much, and raised a hand as I tried to call out, scream, and thank God my throat was too hurt to do it because I wasn’t thinking. I was surrounded by walkers, I couldn’t just scream! But still, I tried to run, maybe Daryl would see I wasn’t walking like the dead, but the others had dragged him away then and he wasn’t looking in my direction anymore, his screams getting lost more and more among the dead’s groans.

This couldn’t be happening. No, just… No! Daryl thought I was dead. They were leaving the farm! They were leaving me behind not even knowing they were doing it.

I was fucking alive! I was still alive…

But maybe not for long now what I whimpered in desperation to scream, tears rolling down my face, and they saw me. At the same time, what felt like a dozen walkers turned their dead heads right at me.

For the third time that night, I thought, that is it, I’m dead.

No weapons, no strength, no people, all I could do was look around to find the path that had the least walkers and run there. It was in the opposite direction, towards the woods. I started running and I was too slow, they’d catch me. I dodged a few of them on the way, pushed a few them away, and ran, just ran, my pace picking up slowly. I crossed the line of trees and looked back. No more walkers in front of me but many behinds, following me. I couldn’t count but if I had to guess I’d say like fifty of them. I ran blindly among the trees, twigs hitting me, cobwebs gluing to my sticky skin, and I didn’t know where I was going or what was happening, but I just ran, my muscles screaming.

In my mind, Daryl was screaming. Kicking and fighting to get to me. I heard it over and over again. The agony in his voice pierced into my heart and I started crying even as I ran, getting even more blind to my surroundings.

What the fuck had happened? Who shot Shane? Why did the one who shot didn’t help me? Did they also think I was gone, that there was no more time? Was it the herd that made them not get to me? How did the others know what was happening? When did Daryl wake up at the house and got to the farm?

I had to get to the house, but to do so I’d have to turn around and go back to the farm and cross it, which I knew was impossible because there were thousands of walkers there. I had to go around then, a long, really long way and in the dark, I was most likely going to get lost, but it was my only option. But the walkers were still behind me, too many of them, I couldn’t make my way now. I needed to get rid of them. Their groans were too loud, which meant they were really close and really too many. I’d have to get them dispersed, maybe I could kill one by one if they weren’t too close to one another, and for that… I’d have to keep walking.

Day 74

When day rose I could see them better. They were a little less than I thought, but still a lot. I had been escaping them for hours, my legs were weak and trembling, the pain was unbearable, but still, I walked in the same pace as they did, and they never gave up, they wouldn’t just let go, their instincts were gonna make them keep following me to the end of the earth. I had to kill them. I had to kill over thirty walkers with nothing in hand and when I was near death myself.

So if I was gonna die anyway… I would fucking die fighting like hell.

Never stopping walking, I looked for something that’d help me on the forest ground. Before, when it was dark, it had been impossible to see anything, but now my eyes caught a long branch on the ground, broken from a tree, resulting in a splintered yet sharp tip. That was it. I stopped and turned, testing the branch weight in my hands, and when the first walker got to me and I pierced its brain with the tip, I saw this could work.

So I kept letting them come to me, not bothering to escape anymore.

There was a pile of nearly ten walkers on the ground already when the long branch broke and I was left with it much shorter, which made me need to get even closer to the walkers I killed, but it ended up working well too. There were still walkers coming at me, but they were sparser now, and I lost count of how many I had to kill as I started walking back the way I had come.

I needed to get back to the farm. I needed to know what was happening, where they’d all gone, if they were still at the house or had it been overrun too? Was anybody hurt? Was Daryl safe?

My heart hurt physically imagining what he was feeling. I put myself in his place and thought of how I’d feel if I’d seen him as a walker. Part of me would have died. My heart would have been unrepairable broken and I’d never be the same. And he loved me. He said it just last night… He loved me and he thought I was dead… And now I was crying as I walked, no more walkers at sight for now. I tumbled around, hoping I was on the right way, I didn’t know if I had been walking in a straight line, probably not, and I’d end up lost in the woods.

But among the thinning trees, I saw I reached the farm. The sun was high in the sky and I calculated I had walked for around three hours in the dark, stopped to fight walkers and then walked all the way back, so it was probably around noon, which meant I’d been gone, dead, for the entire morning.

It’d been too long. Way too fucking long…

I stopped there and couldn’t go any further. Leaning on my side on a tree, a hand on my baby bump, _please, please be alright_ , I remained there for a long moment, tears falling freely down my face because I had no strength to even sob anymore, as I watched hundreds of walkers all around the farm, on the meadows, around the barn, on the tent area we’d lived in, around the house, on the porch. They were every _fucking_ where. It was impossible for me to get in there. I wanted into the house, clean myself up, have water, something to eat, but I wasn’t even sure if I’d be able to swallow anything, my throat hurt so badly.

But I couldn’t just stay here watching the farm. I had to go to the house, maybe the walkers hadn’t got there, maybe there were all in, safe, maybe Daryl was there. So I restarted my slow, painful walk, going to my left as to go around the farm, at least cross the land through somewhere with no walkers. It was a really huge farm…

I found the stream. A God’s blessing, if he existed or was even looking at me. I all but fell in the water, drinking desperately, the pain on my throat not stopping me from getting the most needed large gulps. I got a bit more alive then. I washed my face, took off my shirt and tried to clean it against a rock. It didn’t do a good job but part of the blood and guts that were there did wash off. Then I rubbed my body with the shirt itself and felt a bit more human. My dreads were caked but there was no time to deal with them now, so I just knotted them as high and away from my face as I could, put on the dripping shirt back on, took a deep breath to muster the courage, and kept on my way.

I killed many more walkers on my way to the house. The spike had broken halfway there and I had to find another one, not as good as the first but it did the job. I was wandering robotically by now. I don’t know where my energy came from, I was miserable, hungry, hurt and hurting.

 _Shane_ … That son of a bitch, look at what he’d done! He tried to kill me! Sadness gave place to rage as I thought about it and it helped. It was good to feel something other than despair. It kept me going. I wished Shane was alive just to I could fucking kill him.

It might have been late afternoon when I found the area of the house. It’d been difficult because had no idea where I was and when Daryl and I had found the house we’d been on another area of the woods, and the second time we came from the road with the cars. But I did find it and stopped at the line of the woods, watching.

No cars. No sounds. No bike.

Around the house, by the roses, inside the house, visible through the open door and windows, there were tens of walkers dormant walking aimlessly around.

Nobody was there. They were gone. Daryl was gone.

In the last flicker of hope, I thought they could be on the road where it all started. Where it all started… I was already dry in thirst again when I forced myself to move. I needed to walk to the road…

_I need to get to the road. I need to find Daryl… Daryl…_

* * *

_Sophia, stay... We…_

There were water and food, a blanket and a flashlight. Nobody had found it, Sophia obviously hadn’t, and if they had been there after escaping, they had ignored it. It was all still there, and I drained one of the bottles of water immediately. It was warm and nearly made me throw up. I grabbed the jar up peanut butter and opened it desperately, my last meal had been the turkey – _oh Daryl…_ – and I ate it with my fingers as if it was a feast. Still eating it, I kept on walking among the cars, just… Looking. Looking for someone, some sign, some life… And there was nothing. They didn’t wait. There weren’t there waiting for anything. They had nothing to wait for, or to look for… Because I was dead.

Dusk found me sitting on the asphalt, crying and completely alone. My heart physically ached more than my head and my throat, it hurt like it never had before.

I’d been left behind.

Day 75

It was a good thing I’d still had the mind to crawl into a car to sleep instead of just lying there on the road because what woke me up was the sound of a walker by my window, groaning and leaving goo all over the glass, trying to reach me.

_Fuck, just leave me alone for a fuckin’ minute!_

The day was high by then, I probably slept a lot, many hours and my body needed to recover, and even though I still felt miserable I did feel a bit stronger. I still had no weapons on me, though, and the walker was right there. Looking out of the car through the dusty windows, I tried to find something that’d help, since the inside was clear, but there was nothing I could come up with. So I stopped and looked at the walker at the window.

 _That’s it, motherfucker_. Leaving through the opposite door, I rounded the car before it could follow me, opened the back door and grabbed the wanker by its neck when it reached me. Groaning, I maneuvered it to the open door and slammed it shut on its head. It still groaned after the first bow so I repeated it twice more, making her brain explode everywhere.

It was eerily silent after that.

I walked back to where the sign for Sophia was and on the way found a bag full of useless papers. They flew in the wind along the road when I tossed then away. The bag was filled with the rest of the food and water, the blanket and flashlight. Hanging it on my back, I walked.

Miles ahead, the jammed cars were sparser and the road elongated in front of me until it was empty of cars. Right there, at this mark between all the looted, abandoned cars, and the empty road, I stopped. There were track marks. Larger ones like in a truck or the RV and a single one like in a bike. They’d gone through here, and Daryl had been riding his bike. I mean, that if this was really them, those marks could have been there for a long time, but they did make me hope and keep walking, following them. Maybe I could still catch up, even though they were motorized and I was walking and it had been over a whole day…

_No. Don’t. Don’t lose hope. It’s all you got now. Just go._

I stopped just once to eat from a tuna can, sitting in the middle of the road, and kept going. It was when the sun started to go down that I stopped seeing the marks. They were faded as if they’d gained speed and not needed to hit the breaks for anything. There was nothing to track anymore, and it wasn’t like I knew how to track or if Daryl was here with me to do it.

Daryl wasn’t here with me…

God, I missed him.

I sat again, this time with my back against the guardrail, and I knew it wasn’t safe, I knew walkers could come up from the woods behind me, that people could show up, that I was being too loud, but I lost all control. I just lost it. I sobbed loudly, my heart broken to pieces, all hope gone. They were gone and I was alone and there was nothing else to do now but cry, but to feel all those painful feelings, but trying to find a _why_ and a _what could I have done_. Why hadn’t I escaped Shane before he could put the chloroform in my nose? Why hadn’t I attacked him? How did I not see that he was approaching with bad intentions? Why didn’t I run to Daryl when I saw him, ignoring the possibility of getting bitten by all the dead around me? At least I would have tried… If I’d got bitten at least I would be here now, alone…

But then my baby would be dead too.

My baby… My little boy…

I stopped immediately, hugging my stomach. “Please be fine…” I whispered. “It’s just the two of us now. Please be fine…”

It was getting dark and I needed shelter. Time to stop with the self-pity.

 _Get the fuck up, Sam_.

Minutes ahead I found a dirt road coming out of the main road and took it. A few miles on, there was a little wooden house, more like a cottage, with a dry hedge all around. I circled it carefully looking for signs of life or death and found nothing. In the backyard, a tree stump with half-cut firewood was left abandoned, an old, long-handled axe stuck to it. So then I had an axe again, after so long. I remembered I had gotten well with the axe I had before letting it fall on the street in Atlanta when I ran to recover the bad of guns. That would do well.

The back door of the cottage opened easily with a strong shove. The whole space smelled like mold, but it was clean of walkers and seemed to be empty for a long time. That would do for tonight.

I sat at a corner, curved around myself as I ate from another can and had some water, and tried to sleep, wrapped in the blanket. I missed that bed… I missed the tent I’d slept in with Daryl.

 _My god_ , how I missed him…

Day 76

I emptied the last of the water I had when I woke up and ate one more can, this time of anchovies. I’d always hated anchovies, but well. With more light now, I looted the house a little but there was nothing useful to me. Leaving the house through the back door, I saw there was a pear tree with a few fruits and they seemed not to be ripe yet. Either way, I took the few I could reach and put them in the bag.

Getting back to the dirt road I saw this was actually a small neighborhood and there were houses all along this narrow road. The axe was in my hand when I reached the next-door house and looted it as well. In there I found a slingshot and nothing else. I had never used a slingshot in my life, but I thought I could give it a try, so I tossed it in the bag. On the third house there were a few cans of soup but looking at it I saw they had been expired for nearly two years. This house had to have been abandoned since long before the apocalypse. Across from it, on the fourth house, I found a large jar of honey and sat at the kitchen table to eat a bit of it. My taste buds exploded at it and I felt the energy returning to my body at the presence of sugar. But now I needed water. In this same house, I found also a jar of hearts of palm and canned peaches.

So I went to the next one, and after this fifth house, there would only be two more to go. The front door of this one had been busted open already, so I entered carefully, axe in hand and raised. There was noise on a corner like someone was hiding there. The house was dark even in daylight, with boards covering the windows, a strong smell of mold and dust making me want to cough. I walked slowly over every corner and was just considering leaving the house and letting it go when I was jumped on. Someone attacked, and it was dark and I held them at bay, pushing them away as strongly as I could so I’d have room to lift my axe and –

“Sam?!”

I froze and then…

“Andrea!!”

I had never liked her and then she’d shot Daryl but _fuck_ was I happy to see her! My axe fell and we hugged tight, laughing in relief.

 _I found them_! I’d found them!

“You’re alive!!” she exclaimed laughing as she let go and held me by my shoulders. “I heard you were dead, turned!”

“Where are the others?” I asked instead of answering, this was not a question that could wait any longer.

Her face fell, though, and I knew she was alone.

“I got lost from them… The herd, they... I had to run and they had to go. They left me behind.”

“Fuck…” I said. She was just as lost as I was. “How’d you know they think I’m dead?”

“Heard shouting. Daryl was… He was out of his mind and Rick kept telling him he couldn’t go there because you were gone, he’d seen you dead. But I don’t know much after that because I had to escape and I never found them again.”

Nodding and feeling the sadness that was getting old washing over me like rain, I let myself slide to the floor, my back against the wall.

“What happened?” Andrea asked as she sat in the middle of the hallway, facing me.

I told her all of it, since the lockout with Shane and what he’d done to me. She was tearing up when I finished and I was too, but I was tired of crying and time was flying. So I forced myself up, reached a hand to help her up saying, “Let’s check the rest of the houses for any signs of them and for food, and then we’ll go back to the road. It’s the last place we know they’ve been, so it’s where we gotta stay.”

* * *

They had been siphoning cars on the road for gas. I wanted to believe it was them, at least. Someone had taken all the gas from every car we found, none worked, so Andrea and I kept on walking. She had found water before and had a few bottles on a bag, so we were good. We stopped once to sit down and rest a little, eating what I’d found, but for the most part we simply walked. Walked…

Night was falling and we’d decided we’d stop at the next town or car we found to rest for the night. Here was a car a few miles after that, but now that we were not alone it would be safer since one could sleep while the other took watch. Andrea offered to take the first and I was glad because I was simply exhausted.

It was probably a couple of hours of sleep. I’d just disappeared into slumber, not even enough time to think of all that had happened before blacking out. I was woken up, though, and in the second I opened my eyes I knew something was wrong.

The back door of the car by my head was open and Andrea was there, crouched on the ground, calling me.

“Someone’s coming!” she whispered urgently.

“Is it –”

“Not them!”

I was wide awake in an instant, patting myself for my knives and guns, but remembered I didn’t have them anymore and Andrea had my axe. So I slid out of the car, grabbed her hand and pulled her urgently to the woods. We stopped just a few trees in, hiding behind a large trunk, and watched. Andrea handed me my axe as we did, in silence. It didn’t take a minute for us to see them: two man with flashlights were checking the car and, clear as day, we heard them talk in the silence of the night.

“They ran through there,” one was pointing directly at us. “Two women I think.”

“Were they alone?” the other asked.

“Saw only them, guess so.”

“Good…” the other said and his tone sent chills all over my spine. “We getting ourselves some warmth tonight.”

Andrea and I looked at each other, her eyes wide in fear. Then the man left the road, entering the woods and coming right at us.

“Run!”, I mouthed to her and we took off, the men instantly seeing us, shouting and following. Once again I saw myself running in the woods in the dark without seeing where I was going, and I was sick of it, but this time it was even worse because these were people, and people could be so much worse than walkers.

They were fast and we were both too tired to outrun them. They’d catch us unless we attacked first.

Unless _I_ attacked first.

So I reached a hand for Andrea to make her stop and dragged her down onto the roots of a big tree. Not questioning it for a moment, she sat there and made herself small as was shaking in terror but kept quiet. I stood there, my back against the tree, breathing hard.

_Don’t hesitate. Do not hesitate._

Their running footsteps were closer and closer and I prayed that I’d get the timing right. Closer, closer. My heart was beating loudly in my years, and still, I heard them.

_Don’t hesitate._

I swung the axe sideways with all the strength I could muster onto the path by the tree and it met his chest, penetrating him deeply right at the heart. He screamed in agony and loudly but just for a moment. I tried to hold on to the axe as he fell to the ground, motionless, but it had gotten stuck there and fell with him.

I’d just killed another man.

The other one came running then, enraged and tackled me to the ground. I hit it hard, tree roots hurting my back bad and making the air escape my lungs, and for the second time in three days, I had a man on top of me, trying to kill me. I’d be damned I let his hands around my neck, so I screamed and fought like hell to keep his hands at bay, but quickly enough I heard Andrea growl loudly just before she attacked him with the axe. It stuck to the back of his head and he was dead instantly. I froze for a moment, some blood showering down my face, but quickly recovered and rolled his body away from me.

Andrea had the axe in hand, breathing hard, eyes bugged glued on the dead man. I’d done this before, this was my second kill and both of them had been to protect myself. But this seemed to be her first time. I got up and carefully approached her, reaching out for the axe.

“Hey, it’s okay,” I told her quietly and she turned her wide eyes to me. “It’s alright. Just hand me the axe. Good, there you go,” I took it and rested it against the tree. “You alright?”

She stuttered before being able to say “I killed him.”

“You did,” I said holding her shoulders to keep her looking at me. “And you saved my life. You saved my life, Andrea,” she just blinked, saying nothing, maybe only now understanding that. “He was gonna kill me. Rape me most likely, and then kill me. You saved my life. Focus on that.”

She nodded weakly and blinked, so I took it as a good sign. I pulled her with me to go back to the road, talking the life savior axe with me before going. I was not in a much better condition than her, but I had to keep calm or she’d panic. My stomach was in knots and I felt a bit faint, but it was only when we got back to the car and she sat down on the back seat that I let go and threw up on the side of the road.


	31. Day 77

“Why do you think you and I didn’t get along?” Andrea broke the silence when we ate quietly sitting on the hood of the car. It was a valid question.

“We’re just very different,” was all I answered.

“You really think so?”

“Yeah.”

“But you don’t even know my story. Just like I don’t know yours.”

“You know a bit of mine,” I told her and, when she looked confused at me, I moved on. “That night at the camp… With Amy and the wine…”

She took a breath as if hearing her sister’s name felt like a punch in the stomach. “Yeah… That part.”

“That part… That part tells a lot about me,” but I thought a bit more about it. “But it’s not… I don’t know, I always felt like you were always trying too hard. I wondered a few times why was that.”

“What did I seem to be trying too hard?”

“To be strong. To be independent, feminist, to rub in the men’s faces that you were just as good as them. You didn’t need to try that hard to show it… You already were, I could see it, but you kept trying to make it very clear to everyone.”

“I don’t know if I know how to act any other way…”

“Why’s that?”

She thought for a moment before saying “My father… He was very, uh… Demanding. Rigorous, critical. He was always finding my mistakes, my weaknesses, and my mom’s… I guess instead of believing him and putting myself down as well, I wanted to prove him wrong. Everything I did was always to show him that he was wrong.”

I had judged Andrea, never stopping to think that her personality that I disliked would have come from something. Everyone has a history and their own wounds and they all make a person what they are. I didn’t dislike her anymore. Andrea had shot Daryl in an unconscious attempt to prove do Dale, a father figure, and probably Shane too, that she was capable of doing it. She was not right and it was no excuse, but I could understand it a bit better now.

We talked as we followed road signs. On pointed to a church somewhere in a community and we followed it, taking a side road. Even only three months with no care this road already had overgrown on all the sides, and it made me uneasy. Walkers could be hiding on the bushes, so I had my axe ready. We needed to find Andrea a weapon urgently. Since this morning she’d been carrying a spike that we thought would be strong enough, but it was not ideal. And we needed food, water, and a car. And to find our group. To find Daryl.

_Oh, Daryl…_

_“You ‘n I… We’re it._ ”

The bushes shook right on our left side removing me abruptly form the memories. As if they’d been there all the time, just waiting for us to get close enough as if they could think, a small herd of walkers came out, at least ten of them. Surprised, Andrea and I stumbled a bit and ran ahead on the road, but from the same bushes ahead of us, more of them came out, so we turned to go back where we’d come from, but the first part of them had closed the road behind us. So I grabbed Andrea, and she grabbed me, and we ran into the woods on our side, straight into the bushes, All I hoped is that there weren’t more in there. I felt something cut my arm and still ran, entering the sparse patch of woods there.

Goddam big herd. They’d been dormant there and our presence woke them up and now they were coming and I did not get scared, I got fucking _furious_. This again, seriously? Running through the woods with walkers behind me and nowhere to go? No fucking way.

“That tree!” I shouted at Andrea over the walkers’ growls. “Climb up!”

It was a huge oak, royally standing there, dwarfing all the other trees around. Thick, strong branches that seemed easy to climb. Well, at least for me, I was used to that stuff, so I let Andrea go first, positioning my hands to give her foot a shove up. She groaned in the effort to go up but was out of the ground in seconds and kept on. I looked around before going up and they were _there_ , at least tree closer and this crowd of dead behind them. Axe in hand, I looked up at Andrea who was just settling on a higher branch, safe, looking down terrified at me. I let the axe fall against the oak roots, I knew the walkers wouldn’t be taking it, obviously, took a few steps back for impulse and ran, climbing over the tree. It would have been a much easier movement just months ago without the baby bump and not being so hurt and tired, but I did the job. In seconds I was sitting with Andrea, the walkers on the ground confused, looking around and passing the tree following nothing. Thanks to fuck they were not smart at all.

“What now?” Andrea whispered. We were sitting straddling the branch face to face, pretty close to each other. I was glad she’d learned not to be loud. Finally.

“Now we wait. They’ll pass.”

“We won’t be able to hold this position much longer.”

She was right. We’d have to hold upright, holding on only to the branch we were sitting in.

“Okay, rest your back against the trunk,” I whispered to her pointing to the tree with my chin. She was about four feet away from it. I offered her a hand to steady her. “Slide back, careful.”

Nodding demonstrating just how nervous she was, she took my hand while I still held myself to the branch with the other and started wiggling her hips backward, sliding really slowly, afraid she’d tumble sideways. I stretched myself forward to keep her hand safe in mine until her back finally rested against the trunk. She breathed. I asked if she was alright with a thumbs-up gesture and she nodded.

Now I had to get a better position, and for that, I’d need to go to another branch, the best option was one above us and slightly to the left. The herd under us lifted dust and a terrible stench, but I tried to ignore it. Had to ignore the fact that if I fell I’d have absolutely no chance. No chance to survive, for my boy to survive, to lead Andrea to safety, for me to find the group, to see Daryl again.

But well, no pressure!

I slid towards Andrea and she helped me on the last few inches as we sat nearly chest to chest, and then using the tree trunk and her shoulders as leverage, I carefully stood up.

“Oh god, careful!” Andrea whispered in terror from beneath me.

I said nothing, just focused in reaching up to a thinner yet stiff branch above my head, needing to get on my tiptoes to be able to get a good grip. Trusting it, I eyed the larger branch that was my goal, calculated, took a deep breath and jumped, my hands firm on the branch as I swung my whole body. I heard Andrea whimper in trepidation when my feet did not reach where they were supposed to and I hang there by my hands, whimpering. I was breathing hard through my teeth, my arms burning at my own weight, nothing under my feet except for the herd. Concentrating, I swung my body back once again, taking a stronger impulse than before, and reached it. I hugged the branch with my legs and stopped for a moment, breathing, and then gave the branch I was holding a strong shove and let go, throwing my upper body over the large one. I hugged it with arms and legs, my face turned to Andrea and stayed like that for a moment, my strong breath puffing my cheeks. After a moment I sat up and slid back a little, finally finding the oak trunk and resting against it.

I was getting old for this. And too tired. And maybe just a bit too pregnant.

* * *

I didn’t doze. I just rested my eyes.

Andrea and I were silent for a long time. It was probably over an hour. We didn’t know how many walkers big the heard had been, but it was so much larger than we thought. So, so much. They were slow, so it took a long time for their crowd to thin up, but even then they never stopped coming. Looking down, I could see at least five at each time, never less than that, as if they were following each other, not necessarily us or anything alive. They were just walking aimlessly, but at the moment we jumped back to the ground they’d attack.

My back was burning and Andrea was always trying to stretch and change positions the best she could. We couldn’t stay here for much longer.

“Hey,” I whispered at her and she looked sideways at me. “Where’s your spike?”

“Down there,” she pointed to the ground. It was fallen near the roots, just a foot away from my axe.

“We gonna have to go down,” I told her.

Her eyes opened more at that, “You’re sure?”

“We need to go, can’t just stay here. They’ll never stop coming. We’ll have to kill a few and run in that direction,” I pointed behind us. “I don’t see any movement from there. And then we can try the main road again.”

Swallowing visibly, Andrea nodded.

“Hey,” I called her again and she looked back at me. “You can do it.”

She nodded again, taking a calming breath.

“I’ll jump down first and start on them so you’ll have time to go down and take your spike, ok?”

“Please be careful!” she told me

I nodded, “When you have the spike, we’ll stand back to back and kill them, alright?”

I didn’t wait for her to answer because I knew she’d just nod nervously and maybe tell me to be careful again. So, trusting she’d do as I said, I threw a leg to the side of the branch and let myself fall. I fell heavily to the ground to a crouch and looked around just as the walkers saw me. Taking the axe that was at my feet, I got up and walked towards them rolling it in my hands.

 _Come on, motherfuckers_.

Andrea did exactly as I said. When she got her back to mine, armed with the spike, I had killed two of them already. One by one we let them come and killed them. Odd how satisfying it was becoming… Creepy to think about that.

It stopped being satisfying when Andrea’s spike broke and she screamed when the walker came over her. She stumbled backways, falling down by my side, the walker over her. I had one right there coming at me but Andrea was panicking.

“Fuck!” I shouted and shoved the farmer walker away with a kick in the chest, and then turned to help her, my axe spiking into the back of its head. It fell dead on top of Andrea and I turned to deal with the one I’d kicked.

Too close. It was inches away from me, no space for me to rise the axe, its hands reaching and grabbing my arms. I fought it away, stepping back and then…

Well…

Then the head of the walker was gone, falling to the ground like a football, its heavy body falling just a moment after.

Standing right there in front of me was a living person I had not seen arrive at all, hood up covering her face, a sword in hand. A fucking _sword_. Behind her were two walkers chained as if on leashes, just standing there, not attacking or anything. She said nothing, just moved on to kill the next walker as I recovered from my shock enough to keep fighting them with my axe, Andrea not getting up, too scared and obviously weaponless to fight. The ninja with the sword killed like half a dozen walkers in seconds when I dealt with three of them with the heavy axe.

Damn, I wish I had a sword.

Then they were gone. The woman and I looked around, rounding each other to make sure no more walkers were near, and it was finally clear. Only then I faced her again, just as Andrea got up from the ground. The ninja was shaking her sword, walker blood splattering out of its surface.

“Where did you come from?!” I asked before even thinking about thanking her.

“You alright?” she asked.

You know in movies when somebody suddenly remembers something and a lot of scenes of those memories are quickly shown? Her voice did that to me. It was just _not possible_. I leaned down a bit trying to see her face under the hood and asked, disbelief clear in my voice:

“ _Michonne_?”

She paused, just like Andrea by my side, and after a couple of seconds, she lowered the hood and damn, it was really her, surprise widening her eyes.

“ _Sam?!_ ”

I laughed. No, really, I just had to laugh. How the fuck was this possible? How, in the middle of the woods of Georgia I could’ve just had my ass saved by _Michonne_?

“Oh my God, Sam!” she said and rushed to hug me. I’m not sure if I was laughing or crying now as I hugged her back. It was just so _good_ to see her.

“Holy shit, Michonne, I can’t believe it!”

She let go of me and held me by my arms, “You _did_ get the dreads done!”

I laughed aloud, “I did!”

“I can’t believe you know each other!” Andrea said by my side and sobered me up a little.

“Mich, this is my friend Andrea. Andrea, Michonne was my best friend in high school!”

Andrea huffed a quick laugh, “Seriously?”

“Yes!” Michonne and I answered together.

“You’re back!” I said turning to Mich after she and Andrea shook hands.

“I was living in Sandy Springs when the outbreak happened. I tried to go down to Savannah after a while but… Well. Couldn’t.”

Oh, something bad had happened.

“Let’s catch up later. We need to get out of those woods, this huge herd just passed by us. And fuck, you’ll need to explain these two!” I said pointing at the walkers in the chain behind her.

“I saw the herd,” Michonne said. “Didn’t think a living person could be ‘round here ‘till you two jumped down from the tree,” she said as she sheathed her sword on the holster hanging from her back. “C’mon, I’m holing up in a cabin a few miles away.”

* * *

It was a simple hunting cabin among the trees, but Michonne seemed to have worked a bit on it already. It was almost clean and there were boards on the windows, an oil lamp on a table, bottles of water and canned food on the small kitchen area and a bed with blankets at a corner.

Andrea and I ate from what she gave us and had water and were able to sit and rest a little. Andrea dozed off right there where she sat on the floor. The poor woman was exhausted.

I sat on the bed with my back to the wall and Michonne came to sit by my side. Quietly, she reached for my hand and squeezed it, and we smiled at each other sideways.

“It’s so good to see you…” she told me quietly.

“You have no idea, Mich…”

And at that, with no warning, I started crying. Clutching her hand, my chin fell against my chest and I cried, my chest painfully tight.

“Oh, honey…” she whispered and hugged me sideways, making my head fall on her shoulder. “It’s alright… You let it out.”

I couldn’t speak for long minutes. After I was cried out, I straightened and tried to dry my face but even if I wasn’t sobbing anymore, the tears still fell freely.

“You two alone?” Mich asked in a whisper.

My chin trembled as I nodded. “We had a group... Got separated from them. They’re still out there, somewhere.”

“How this happened?”

Well, she got me started. I told her all that happened that night with Shane, but to explain Shane I had to tell why he’d hated me so much to the point of trying to murder me and to explain it, I explained my leadership of the group and how it all started, since Savannah, since the Dixon’s house.

“So Daryl thinks you’re dead?” she asked when I finished. She’d also asked questions during the tale, to understand it better.

I felt like crying again when I said “He does… And the way he screamed…” and I didn’t hold anymore, I cried again.

“They’re still out there,” Mich squeezed my hand and said it firmly. “They might think you’re dead but you know they’re alive. We can find them.”

_We._

“We’ll stay together now, right?” I asked her, nodding with a hope she’d say yes.

“We absolutely will,” she said with total certainty.

“Do _you_ have a group?”

She smiled sadly, shaking her head. “No. It’s just me. I’ve been alone since the beginning.”

I reached out for her other hand, now holding firmly to both of them. “Not anymore. You’re not alone.”

She smiled tearfully as she nodded. She pulled me for a hug again and I was so relieved to have found someone I trusted so much, someone I had loved as a sister one day in the past. It was like a balm to be feeling something good among so much sadness.

“Now…” she said as she let me go. “What about this belly there? Daryl’s?”

“Not technically… But after we got together he said he wanted it. So yeah… It’s Daryl’s.”

“Damn… It must be hard for him to think he’s lost not only you but his baby too…”

“God…” I cried. “This hurts so much because I can imagine what he’s feeling. It would have killed me if it was him…”

“He’ll make it through it.”

Oh, something bad had happened.

“Mich… Who did you lose?”

Her eyes went vacant in an instant. She looked away and down and I knew whoever it was, it was still fresh, it still hurt just to think of it.

“Can’t speak if it… Not yet,” she said, her voice grave.

“It’s okay. I’ll be here when you want to talk,” I whispered at her and saw her nod, still not looking at me. I was silent for a moment before speaking again. “Andrea lost her sister,” I told her and Michonne looked at me and then at the sleeping Andrea. “Not long ago. It’s been… God, feels like a year but… Two weeks ago? So much’s happened since then…”

“We’ve all been hurt, one way or another… Sometimes I don’t even know what the hell I’m still fighting for.”

I thought for a moment. “People kept saying it was the apocalypse. The end of the fucking world. But… We’re still here. Ain’t we? We’re here, alive. Finding old friends,” I smiled at her and she also did, tight-lipped. “And still able to fight, and breathe, and love. So the world ain’t _really_ over, is it? We’re still here.”

She smiled at me, eyes shining with tears. “We’re still here.”


	32. Day 111

Who needs men?

Who needs a group full of men and their testosterone and puffed chests and attempts to prove who’s got the bigger dick? Who needs them? Who needs them fighting to see who’s in charge, when a small group of just women like us could help each other, care for each other, fight together, save the other’s lives over and over again, and support, hold, appreciate, love?

Who needs men?

The three of us were like a well-oiled machine. Andrea had become a good fighter, feeling less and less fear in face of the dangers. In the month it’d been just the three of us, Andrea had adopted two machetes we’d found left behind in a looted camping store, and she fought beautifully with them in hands.

Michonne and her katana were inseparable and she looked like a goddess fighting with it. She needed nothing else, she could slice off half the heads of four walkers at once with just one swing and she wouldn’t even break a sweat.

I had retired my heavy firewood axe and adopted a much lighter, practical bush axe, and also kept knives on my waistband. I got good with it, really good. It had become easy for me to strike down at their heads and pull the blade off their skulls before quickly moving to the next one.

We were a team. We walked, we looted, found temporary places, found cars and abandoned them when they were no good anymore. And those two women became my family, my protectors. They thought I didn’t notice, but they always made sure I ate a bit more than they did, that I rested more, took shorter lookouts. They were my sisters, my son’s aunts.

Still, I had lost weight. My stomach seemed to have grown abnormally for this stage of pregnancy. I was four months along or so, I calculated about eighteen or nineteen weeks, but as I was so thin it was very perceptible now. The jeans I had on when that all happened at the farm, and the other pair of jeans I had found a bit after we formed out three-way group did not fit anymore. I had to find new ones, larger and made do with a belt. They were comfortable, though.

The girls worried. Michonne tried to be discrete when asking about the baby’s movements, but I knew she was worried when I told her I hadn’t felt anything other than the little butterfly wings inside my belly. I worried too… But he was growing, wasn’t he? If my stomach was getting bigger even with all the lack of food, nutrition, rest and all the things I should be having, he was still growing. I felt weak sometimes, had to sleep more, and Andrea and Michonne were always there to keep watch and let me rest.

So who needed men?

Well me. I did. I needed my man. I couldn’t believe it had been over a month since that night and we hadn’t found a trace of them. Not a sign that they had been around the places we went through. Every single walker we found on our way, walking or gone, I would check to see if there wasn’t an arrow stuck to it. I never found any. We sometimes did see track marks but it was impossible to know if it was theirs, they could be anyone’s. There was nothing that could make me believe Daryl was around, that the others were around.

I thought a lot of them, of what they were doing. If they’d found a safe place if they’d found trouble on their way. How was Lori now? She was over a month behind me, so she was probably already showing as well. Were she and Rick fine? How was Carl? Had he perfected his shooting, or learned how to use any other weapon? How was Carol surviving the loss of Sophia? Was Carol keeping her loyalty to Daryl like she’d told us that day in the RV? Had she learned how to fight? Had the Greenes escaped the farm with them? Were they all a big group now? And if so, did that mean Glenn and Maggie were still together? Had the Greenes, Jimmy and Patricia learned how to fight, to defend themselves?

How about Daryl? Had he moved on? Was he still mourning me? Did it cross his mind at any moment that I might still be alive? That Rick was mistaken or that he had not seen it right when he looked at me across the meadow? Probably not. Certainly not. Had he retreated within himself or had he created a good friendship with the others?

There was one thing I was sure, though. Daryl would be making sure the group went on with my plans. That they were looking for and would find a safe place. _With walls_. I was sure he’d tell the group “ _It’s what Sam would’ve wanted_.” I could hear him say it in my mind. So they’d find a place, Daryl would make sure, or maybe they already had. They’d be fine.

And I would find them. Someday…

* * *

We’d been off the main roads for a long while now. Weeks probably, trying to find a place to stay. Occasionally we found small districts or neighborhoods, but in there we always found nothing that felt right. We’d thought we’d found somewhere interesting once: an L shaped motel with a parking lot right in front of it that we could maybe close around somehow. We spent three nights there until we decided the only open area of a new place to live could not be a cemented parking lot. So we moved on.

There was a tall brick, roughcast wall partially hidden by the overgrowth by a long-abandoned dirt roadside. I gestured Michonne and Andrea to stop and they did without a question, going silent, attentive and ready. We stood there trying to listen to something, any sign that there was something on the other side of the wall. There was complete silence. I gestured to them again and we restarted our walk. This side of the wall elongated for about fifty yards, and we reached its corner. Using it to observe the other side, we checked for anyone’s presence and carefully entered the empty lot, bushes and weed nearly taller than Andrea who was the tallest among us, as we kept following the wall. Another fifty yards and we reached the next corner. We stopped there to survey the other dirt road that was there, one we hadn’t found before. Once again we just stood there, hidden by the overgrowth, trying to listen to anything. I nodded at them when I realized there was nothing to be heard. So we left the bushes and walked on the road. On that side of whatever this place was, there was a closed gate as tall as the walls, made of solid, rough wood. Nothing was visible inside.

We circled it all once again, to make sure whatever was inside was really completely closed up on all sides. It was and there were no flaws on the wall, no wholes, nothing fallen. It was sturdy and solid. Now we stood again in front of the wooden gate.

“What if there’s people inside?” Andrea questioned in a whisper

“Doesn’t look like. Seems abandoned,” Michonne told us.

“We’ll have to take the risk. But we gotta know what’s inside first, it ain’t safe to just go in,” I told them even as I looked around trying to see a way to look over the walls.

“How would we go in, anyway?” Andrea asked. “It’s too tall.”

“That tree over there,” I pointed to one by our right. It was taller than the walls. I’ll climb it and look over the wall.”

“Let me, Sam,” Michonne put a hand on my forearm to stop me when I started walking over there.

“It’s fine, Mich.”

“Please?”

I did love that they cared about me but sometimes it got to my nerves. I could still do stuff, you know? It was like Daryl when he didn’t want me to go to Atlanta, and he didn’t even know I was pregnant. But now Michonne was already walking away, sheathing her katana as she went. Andrea and I followed and stood under the tree, our weapons out as we took guard and Michonne climbed the tree. It was not an easy one but Michonne was capable and fit enough to do it. Once she was high enough, she settled on a branch and gestured something to Andrea. She understood immediately and took off her backpack, looking inside to find the binoculars we had found on our way. She then tossed it up to Michonne, who grabbed it midair.

We were all quiet for long minutes. Up there, Michonne observed carefully and patiently until she finally started climbing down to report.

“No movements inside. It’s overgrown but not as much as outside. There’s a small construction on that corner by the gate, seems to be just one room, and there’s a house towards the back of the lot, it’s kinda big and seems to be a recent construction. Behind it there are trees but nothing more visible. My bet is that it’s empty, but walkers can still be hiding in the brushes.”

“So what you think?” I asked them. “Should we go in?”

They agreed and all we needed not was a way of opening the gate or climbing a 10 feet tall wall. Simple. It was firmly locked from the inside, no chains visible from the outside, so we ended up deciding we’d have to cut open a hole on the wood. Simple. From the tools we had in hand, only my bush axe was fit for it, so we got to work. After the first few strikes Michonne gave it, we head a growl from the inside, a walker in there had heard it. We had to take turns, the wood was really sturdy and it felt like we were at it for hours. I had killed the walker through the gap once I was finally able to cut through the wood and we could see a little of the inside. Another walker came and got the same treatment.

Once the hole was just wide enough for us to pass through it, yet real tightly, we stopped. We didn’t want a huge hole on the gate if we stayed there, and we knew we’d have to close this one somehow. If we got in, anyone could. Michonne went in first, stepping over the walkers’ corpses and surveying the inside for a moment until she called it safe. I went in next and it was much harder to go through the gap sideways with my belly. From the inside, Michonne had to grab the wood and pull it in to try and make the hole a bit wider and I got a scratch on the skin of my stomach even under the shirt, but I got in. Andrea came through much easier.

As we stood inside with our backs to the gate, on our left I saw the small construction Michonne had mentioned. It has a simple door that was left open and, peeking inside, we saw it may have been a small office, left there from when the construction was being done. There was a desk and chair and lockers and papers everywhere.

Ahead of us there was a concrete path that led to the house, a driveway. The grassy area by the right, in front of the house, was overgrown over half my height, but it allowed a good view of the house. Michonne had said it was kinda big… But it was really big. I wondered why had anyone built such a good house here in the middle of nowhere, and why was it this closed up with walls and a strong gate?

“It guesses it was supposed to a drug dealer’s refugee or something,” I told them as I started slowly down the path and then, to my companions’ jump scare, I brought two fingers to my lips and whistled sharply and loudly.

“What the fuck, Sam?” It was Michonne. Since high school I found it funny when she cursed because she rarely did.

“If there are more walkers we’ll know,” I explained and, sure enough, more than one growl sound came from somewhere near the house. “See?”

It was one for each, dealt with easily, and then we started walking around, always together, starting by following the driveway to the side of the house and rounding it. Behind the house, there was a full orchard. The fruit trees, which we didn’t stop now to check of what fruit they were, were blooming and I felt a good thing seeing this. It seemed more and more to be the kind of place I had in mind since the beginning. There was a wide porch on the house there and it even had outdoor furniture still wrapped in plastic, brand new. I caught Andrea smiling at that. On the other side of the house, there was a wooden, cute construction: a chicken coop.

“So did the drug dealer liked to raise chickens?” Andrea asked as we approached it. The little door was open and no chickens were in sight. A shame.

The front of the house also had a porch, though smaller than the back one. We climbed the few steps that led there and looked around at the grassy area and tried to see into the glass windows, but they were too dusty. All we knew is that it was all completely quiet.

As it turned out, the construction of that property wasn’t even done. The attic didn’t even have windows yet and some rooms were not yet painted, but other than that it was all brand new, there were already a few pieces of furniture, the bedrooms were done the kitchen had appliances installed, everything a large family would need to live comfortably in. There was dust, but nothing other than that, no walkers, no bad smells.

It was… Dare I say it? _Perfect?_


	33. Day 140

There was a knock on the front door. I was alone at the house, wearing pajamas and socks and slowly got up from the couch to go open it. I could smell a cake baking. It was all peaceful, quiet, just warm enough, and yet… I felt empty. There was no joy even if I knew things were good in this house. I moved robotically to the door and opened it. Light came from outside, white and bright, blinding me. I raised my hands to cover my eyes and try to see who’d knocked but for long seconds I couldn’t.

“Who’s there?” I asked

“It’s me.”

That voice… My heart burst in my chest. It was him. It was Daryl!

“I can’t see you!” I said lowering my hands trying to see even with the light.

“I’m here. I’m right here,” he told me.

“Daryl!”

I took a step to go thought the door, to try and see him, touch him, but as soon as I crossed it I was in the woods, the light gone, Daryl gone. I was alone there, looking around confused, still frantically calling out to him.

There was a walker fallen on the ground and I moved there to see it. Looking down, I saw it had been taken down with an arrow. It was stick perfectly in the middle of its forehead. _Daryl._ I bent down and pulled it off the skull and held it to my face to see it. He’d been here. Finally, a sign that he was around after so long!

“Daryl!!” I called, hoping he’d hear me. “Daryl, where are you?!”

Movement behind me got me turning suddenly, arrow still in hand and then… I screamed. My heart stopped, my chest was ripped and my world crumbled. He was there, right in front of me… Turned and stumbling to me, jaws open and hungry like every walker, but this was Daryl, his eyes dead, his body decaying, smelling putridly. And he was coming to me and I couldn’t move, hand clutching the arrow. Something moved in me and I looked down at my stomach and could see the baby moving in there, strongly, visibly. And then Daryl was on me, too close for me to be able to defend myself, grabbing me, scratching, inches away from biting me.

I screamed and cried and tried to fight him by my limbs felt heavy and his hands were tight on my shoulders, now shaking me strongly.

“Sam? Sam!” It was Michonne and I was in my bed, still screaming. Reality came back to me slowly as I looked at my sister, breathing hard. “Just a dream! You’re okay. Look at me, you’re fine, you’re okay…”

She hugged me like she would hug a child and shushed me, petting my hair, rocking me in her arms as I sobbed. I tried to speak as I cried but I don’t think Michonne could understand a word. I was saying I had seen him, he’d been there but he wasn’t there, and that he’d been turned, and that I needed him, I needed to find him.

I missed him like hell, my life only half happening, the other half frozen, waiting to move on, at the last night we spent together, when he told me he loved me and that this was his child.

Where was he? _Where the fuck was he_?

He had to be here now. We had a place. We were safe, we were eating well, growing things, we had chickens! The baby was growing and moving, and he had tried to feel it once, he could feel it now! He had to be here, why wasn’t he? Why did this had to happen, what kind of fucked up life was that that brought us something so, _so good_ and then ripped it off our hands like that? He had to be here! They all had to, this could be the community I had dreamed of for everyone, why weren’t them all here?

It was all good. We had problems, of course, but overall, things were good. We’d found very smart chickens inside the walls, hiding and finding their own food on the grass and under the trees, able to escape the walkers that had been in there by hiding. Smart, smart chickens. When we cut off the grass with gardening tools we looted from a store in the nearest little town, they showed up scaring the living hell out of us, and then we started feeling them and they grew used to us, becoming more docile with time. They were all free, out of the chicken coop, going in there on their own to sleep at night. We needed to find a rooster now and we’d have eggs and more chickens. We had fruit trees, some that would not normally be found in Georgia, and we were eating well, and soon the vegetables we’d planted from the seeds we found at the same gardening store would be blooming.

The water part was not easy but it was manageable. The house had none, of course. It would be dreaming too much hoping there would be a well inside the property like there was at the farm… But we did find a small farm nearby that had it. The farmhouse had been destroyed by a fire and nothing in there could have helped us, except for the well. Twice a week we went there with a truck and several barrels and buckets we’d gathered and brought back enough water for the tree of us to drink, cook, wash and flush, for the chickens, and for the plants when it didn’t rain for long.

So it was working. Michonne, Andrea and I had been together for about two months now. My relationship with Andrea had taken a complete turn, it was something else. I had taught her to fight with no weapons, self-defense, and now really knowing now to fight she felt more confident, but not as she tried to be before. Not it was real, now it didn’t seem forced anymore like it had been. She was going though many changes, physically and psychologically, and I had decided I’d be there for her for whatever she needed. She was my sister now.

Now, with Michonne… We had a history. We had a past, and a strong one at that. When she moved away from Savannah on 11th grade I thought I’d never see her again. I had let her down multiple times during out two-year friendship then and I had been sure she was better off without a friend like me.

“Why the hell would you think that?” Michonne asked me once when I told her that.

“I broke promises to you, Mich… More than once.”

“You had a problem, Sam,” Michonne told me firmly. “I knew that every time you promised, you wanted to go through with it.”

“I did want to…”

“So that’s what counts. At the moments you made the promises, you were being truthful. But your decease, your addiction was stronger than you. I went through it the wrong way, I know now… Keeping asking you to promise me you would quit, that was not the right way to go.”

“It was your best, that’s what’s important. Don’t matter if it was the right or wrong way to do it. It was more important to me to have someone that cared as much as you did.”

She nodded with a sad smile, looking down, “You were my best friend. I just wanted to see you well.”

“I know… I wish I had been well enough for it to be… You know… Enough. Today it would be, with the person I am now.”

She smiled, “That’s gotta count for something.”

“Well, life did bring us together again, right? You were always supposed to be my sister!”

She laughed nodding and we hugged tearfully. Michonne had been so, so special to me… I had known her for a long time at school but then one day in the first week of 10th grade I walked up to her, asked her about her dreads because I’d been wanting to get them done too, and that was it. We were together until her parents had to move away from Savannah at the second semester of 11th grade, and we’d never met again. I’d quit school not even a week after her departure.

Michonne had been opening up a bit more, slowly. At the beginning she didn’t even explain the walkers she had on leashes, just told us that they kept the other walkers away for some reason, and they did help quite a lot while we were on the road, but they didn’t keep all of them away. Big crowds still closed in on us even with them. One day Michonne had one of their heads cut off by accident when we got surrounded, and when the fight was over she was kind of shocked with that. Quietly she moved to the second one and killed it too, and never spoke of it. Andrea and I still didn’t know what they had meant or what had happened to her before finding us, but she would tell us on her own time, we didn’t press.

And it was on this day that she did. It got me crying ‘till the end.

Michonne had a son. A baby boy, two years old, named Andre. She lived with her boyfriend and had gone to a refugee center at the outbreak with him, Andre and a friend. It all went well for a while, but one time she went out to go find useful stuff, food, medicine, and when she returned to the center, it was all gone, overrun, nobody had survived. She found her friend and boyfriend turned near the drugs they had been taking, making them useless to defend themselves and Andre. Michonne had lost her son, her everything. My heart was tiny I my chest just to imagine her pain. She was so mad with grief, so enraged, that she made sure the two walkers were not able to bite or scratch and had tied them to chains. Michonne was looking at a wall, not seeing anything, her eyes filled with tears as she told me.

“I was somebody else, Sam. Not me. Not the one you knew. I was gone, faraway. I kept them with me as a reminder to not trust anyone. He was Andre’s father and yet didn’t protect him. If this had not been trustable, nothing else would ever be. So I walked, and walked. Moved south. Wanted to find Savannah but I don’t even know why. I just… Walked. My mind went blank for long periods; I’d be faraway when I came back to myself. I was _not me_.”

Then she blinked and looked at me, the tears rolling down her face. “And then I found you. You and Andrea brought me back. Your dreams and plans brought me back. Your hope to find somewhere safe and to find your group, your _family_ , brought hope back to me. It brought _me_ back.”

She got me crying like a baby.

* * *

I had never been much into cars. Couldn’t figure what was the big deal. I’d wished I had one for transportation, but wouldn’t have cared about brands or models or whatever. But now I’d found this black H3 Hummer in a locked up garage and I adored it. It was my car. With time each one of us had found a good one and took it for ourselves.

I looked fucking great in it.

I’d go out alone at least one a week. Michonne and Andrea didn’t approve it, but it was something I just had to do. _Had to_. I’d go back to the main road, sometimes nearly got back to the farm, then circled back, entered the side roads, the neighborhoods, other farms. Always looking… For them, for any sign they’d been there, for arrows, just anything that’d help me keep my hopes up, and it was always the same. There were signs of people, but no way of knowing if it was them, no goddam arrows. If Daryl had been there, anywhere I was, he was taking the used arrows back so he wouldn’t run out of them. That was smart… But I wished he’d leave at least _one_ behind.

_Please just leave one behind…_

Nothing… Again. But I refused to let my hopes die. What would I be without them? What would I de fighting for? I had to still believe, as I returned on my way home, that next week there would be something. Someone, some sign, some trail, anything.

The worst part of it all was that I knew nobody was looking for me. Daryl was not trying to find my trail. He’d be just moving on with his life, protecting the group, making sure they found a place, but not looking for me. He thought I was dead, why would he? He’d have found me already, my Daryl, such an outstanding tracker. He’d have found me. I wished I’d learned it from him. I’d have asked him to teach me if I’d known…

But how would I have known?

If I wasn’t distracted thinking about this one more failed search, I’d probably have noticed, but I didn’t. I just drove straight home and brought this group of men straight no our gate.

I’d been back for about half hour when there was a strong, loud knock on the wooden gate. We froze where we were at the car as we unpacked things I’d gathered today – of course, I didn’t just wander around looking for them, I’d also take useful things back home. Today it had been real long parachute cord, a few pairs of boots and a box of ground coffee – and were silent for a long moment, minds working fast, hearts accelerating.

“Come on, I know you’re in there!” a male voice said when we didn’t make a sound. “Saw you getting in. Blond girl in a huge Hummer?”

 _Fuck_. Fuck, fuck, fuck! Our weapons were in our hands already as we thought of what to do, who the fuck was this? It was not a voice I’d heard before. Someone had followed me, _stupid_ , stupid distracted, dreamer ass!

“What do we do?” Andrea whispered.

“We just wanna talk!” the man said again. “You gotta have a group in there, just let me talk to your leader! It’s all I want, to talk!”

“Ok”, I whispered to them, who turned to look at me waiting for instructions. “I’ll go up the latter and talk to them. They don’t know it’s just us, they don’t have to know. I’ll say… I ain’t the leader, the leader’s a man and he’s inside and sent me to see who it was.”

They nodded, agreeing it was important for them to think the leader was a man. Fucking sexist world even after the goddam apocalypse.

So I replaced my weapons around my waistband, had guns on a holster, took a deep breath calming down as we walked over to the gate. We had a tall wooden ladder there on the ground, which they helped me put up, and I climbed it.

There were four cars parked there. At least four man out and by each of them, heavily armed with fire weapons, all heads turning to me as I appeared over the wall. In front of them it was clear who was the leader. He smiled pleasantly up at me.

“Ah, the Hummer girl!” and he opened his arms, not carrying guns but with a pistol on his waistband. “Nice to see you up close!”

“How can we help you?” I asked.

“Let me introduce myself first. My name is Philip, but they call me Governor,” _don’t laugh, Sam._ Seriously, _Governor_? What a haughty ass. “I run a community a few miles south of here. And you?”

What now? Real name, fake one, who’s our leader? Go with middle name.

“I’m Lynn, nice to meet you. How can we help you, Governor?”

He took a second to answer, a little smile playing on his lips, and then said with the most condescending tone I’d ever heard, “Are _you_ the leader?”

“Jack is our leader,” I said easily, my father’s name flowing out of my lips without a thought. “He sent me. You can tell me how we can help you and I’ll let him know.”

He laughed. The mothefucker actually laughed and I just knew then. No good. No good at all. My wrist ached my I just tilted my head, not laughing with him as he looked back and around at his men, who were laughing quietly as well, and I waited.

“Well, as I am certain that _Jack_ is right inside this gate listening to every word I say, I’ll go with it then, Lynn.”

“Please go ahead,” I told him, trying to keep my cool.

“I see you have a community going on here, just like I do. My _town_ ’s called Woodbury. I’d like to invite you… And Jack, for a meeting where we can discuss the potential future of our communities regarding trading and partnerships that I am certain would benefit us all.”

Would have sounded good if I believed a single word he was saying.

“I see. Interesting… But what do you have that might interest us?”

He laughed again, quicker this time. “A whole town, _Lynn_. People, supplies, food, water… _Artillery_. Everything that is of interest these days.”

I was quiet, thinking for a moment. Artillery, he said. I looked at the men behind him and, sure enough, there were rifles, pistols and more than one fucking machine gun. _Machine guns_! If he ordered them to attack now we’d be done.

I needed time.

“South, you said?”

“Thirty miles or so,” he said nodding. “It’s on the maps, there’s no missing it.”

I paused and looked around. I knew those looks. The Governor was at least acting, but he should take more care with his men. Their intentions were all but written on their faces. Most of them eyed me with that look some men eye women as if they’re a product, something to consume.

There would be no business with this man. No trade, no relationship. This would end bad and we were just three when he clearly had a whole town and artillery. I needed to buy time, needed to gather my thoughts, decide what to do.

“Sounds interesting. Too good to be true?” I asked him.

“Not at all. It can be good, and this is up to you.”

I nodded, “We’ll gather to discuss it and come to a decision. We might show up for a visit at Woodbury, to see the town and have a meeting with you. How does that sound?”

He nodded quietly with a little smile for a few seconds before finishing. “Sounds _terrific_. I’ll be looking forward to your visit.”

And at that he looked back over his shoulder, nodded and all the men started getting into the cars again. He looked at me again, nodded and held my look with his head down, his eyes betraying him. No friendship here.


	34. Day 141

We needed artillery.

The weapons we had would never be enough to stop them when they came back. Yes, they were coming back, I was sure of it. We needed more if we were to try and defend our home. Pure will would not do against machine guns. There was an army recruiting base in Griffin, not far east from home. We’d been planning to go there for the past few days, and now there was no more delaying.

It was before sunrise and Michonne already had packed her car and weapons to go out there. I hated she’d be going alone, but when you have only three people in the group you don’t have many options. Andrea and I would have to stay to be able to protect home if needed.

Sleep had been difficult that night. Only one would sleep at a time, two keeping watch, one up the ladder looking out the street, the other rounding the area inside the walls. We needed people, I knew it. We’d be safer in number. If only my group was here…

Michonne was entering the car when the engines were heard, just at the few first minutes of day. I ran to the ladder and climbed it without a thought. They were here and we needed to at least know the situation. There were more cars than yesterday, one of them was a small truck that was parked facing the gate and the driver was accelerating it menacingly. Fuck!

I couldn’t see the Governor. One man was out and he laughed when he saw me.

“You know what, blondie! The Governor decided this small little thingy you call a community ain’t worth waiting for you to decide and go all the way over there. We’ll be taking it instead!”

The motherfucker didn’t even bother to come and do it himself. The truck driver accelerated again and moved. I slid down the stairs fast rather than climbing down and ran to our cars where Andrea and Michonne had her weapons ready.

“We gotta run!” I told them. “Too many of them, too many weapons!”

But _holy fuck_ run where? The only way out was the gate, the very same one that burst open, the hinges breaking when the truck ran over to it loudly, dust and splinters filling the air. We crouched down protecting our faces as the truck stopped a few feet inside, other cars and men on foot following it.

It was over. They got us.

“Prepared to fight, ladies?” the same man said. “Where is your leader, then? Or is this it?” as we didn’t reply, just kept pointing our weapons at them, he laughed aloud, “Leader Jack, my ass! That is it, fellas, just three pussies!”

“Why don’t ya lower yer weapons then, girlies?”

Oh, wait.

_Wait!_

He came from among the other man, walking over to us, a machine gun in hand, and a knife stuck to the stump that used to be his hand. I knew it was him before I could see his face. By my side, Andrea moved nervously but didn’t saw a word.

“Better just give already,” he kept on saying as he passed right by the man who’d been speaking before. “We might not even kill ya! Gotta find some use to such nice pieces of ass, ain’t that right?”

Then he stopped right in front of me, looking down at my eyes for a moment and…

 _Winked_.

“Hey there, darlin’.”

I smiled, eyes fixed on his. Holy shit, it was good to see him.

So Merle turned around to face his own group and without a warning, started shooting each one of them with the machine gun. Desperate and caught off guard, some of them tried to escape, running to back to the gate, but as soon as I’d seen Merle give his back to me I already had started shooting as well, and after a few seconds of shock, so did Michonne and Andrea. I ran to the side of the big truck and found men hiding there. My barrel got empty and I finished them with my bush axe, they were too confused by that what happening to offer me too much trouble. It was all a mess of loud, deafening noise, screams, feet hitting the gravel and dust in the air, but it was over quickly enough.

They were all dead. And I had killed two more men.

Four in total, and counting.

Heart pumping, I stayed crouched where I was by the truck wheel as I caught my breath. Then Michonne was there, looking for me, relief passing over her face as she saw I was fine but only for a second, because she raised her katana again at the sight of Merle also rounding the truck.

“Mich, it’s fine!” I told her.

“Yeah, _Mich_!” Merle laughed as he stood there, his machine gun being left behind somewhere as Michonne uncomfortably eyed his knifed hand. “Sammy girl and I go way back!”

“I told you,” I said getting up on my feet. “To not fuckin’ call me Sammy!”

He smiled at what I said and said nothing, which was so unlike the Merle I knew that it startled me. He was smiling, genuinely happy to see me, and then he walked over and gathered me in his arms, hugging me tight, my feet leaving the ground and a laugh flowing out or me.

“God dammit Merle, it’s good to see you!” and said and I hugged him just as tightly.

“I’ll say”, he said in a low voice, a tone I’d never heard on his voice. He then lowered me to the ground, a hand on my shoulder and looked at me up and down, eyes lingering on my belly for a moment. “You good?”

“I’m good!”

“Where’s my brother?”

I was not expecting the question to come so suddenly, nor was I expecting a sob to come out of my throat and tears to spill so fast when I heard it. I saw panic on Merle’s eyes at that, immediate and deep.

“I don’t know!” I told him as I burst into tears. What the fuck was happening to me?

“Fuck does it mean, you don’t know?”

“I got lost form him, from them all, couldn’t find him!”

“But blondie’s here!”

“She got lost from them too. Merle, he thinks I’m dead. He ain’t looking for me, Daryl thinks I’m gone!”

“He think ya dead?!”

“Long story, Merle,” Andrea said from behind him and he turned. She and Michonne looked calmer, now that Michonne understood what was happening. I had told her about Merle before.

Merle turned again to me totally ignoring her, “And that the fuck’s about the belly?!”

“Merle I –”

“That my brother’s? Son of a bitch knocked ya up?!

“No! It’s from before! Not Daryl’s, okay?”

“Can we focus for a moment?” Michonne said from behind Merle and he turned, four of us forming a circle. “You were with the Governor!” she told him.

“Yeah, but how’d I know I’d find Sammy girl here?!”

“Don’t call me Sammy.”

“He just sent us here to take it and whoever was in to Woodbury, son of a bitch ain’t even bothered to come up himself.”

“So you just do as he says and attack other communities like it’s nothing?!” Andrea said crossing her arms.

“Ain’t like we find other communities every other day, Blondie. Don’t know ‘bout those motherfuckers but was the first time I got sent to one.”

Michonne wouldn’t let it go, “If this wasn’t Sam you would just –”

“Michonne,” I stopped her. “Merle’s just defended us by turning against his own people, killing them all to save our ass. Guess that’s enough, ain’t it?”

“My own people my ass!” Merle disagreed, looking at me again. “Owned them for helping me with the hand back in Atlanta, but paid the debt long ago by working my ass off for them, keeping the place safe. My own people’s right here.”

Alright, okay, who are you and what the fuck have you done to Merle Dixon?

“And speakin’ ‘bout people!” he moved on ignoring my stunned expression. “Second batch ‘bout to throw shit in the fan in ‘bout an hour.”

“Second batch?!” I asked him. “This ain’t it?”

“Megalomaniac fucker, the Governor is. He ain’t letting this go. We better not be anywhere near here when they come.”

* * *

We were around the clock, running against time to be able to be gone before the others arrived. I hated leaving. I hated going away without a fight. We had guns now, all the dead man outside had dropped, we could still fight, but Merle assured us the second groups that was coming was bigger and it was too risky. He didn’t want to end up dead for betraying his group as well. He’d perforated their brains with the knife attached to his hand to avoid them turning as the three of us ran to the house gathering everything we needed and loading the cars. We got loaded on weapons now too, if something good was to come out of this all.

Except of course for finding Merle.

 _I’d found Merle_!

Each one of us in a car, Merle on the big truck that had knocked the gate down, we left. And again, in less than one hour, I cried.

* * *

We chose a mall to sleep that night. All looted and filled with walkers, but we found out four is even better than three to clear a place up. The cars and stuff on the parking lot, we holed up. I had gotten used to sleeping in a bed with quality mattress so I put my foot down in choosing a Mattress King to sleep in.

Merle sat by my side as I laid in one of them, his back to the headboard, kicked off his boots and groaned when he removed the metal cover from his cut arm.

“You said you owed them for helping you back in Atlanta?” I asked quietly as not to bother Andrea and Michonne who’d gone to sleep.

“Some of them,” Merle answered, his voice just quiet enough for Merle’s levels. “Was a group of them looting there, looking for artillery. They helped, tourniquet and shit, and took me with’em.”

“But you weren’t bleeding anymore, were you? They found the stove where you burned the wound still on when they went looking for you.”

He was quiet for a long moment, looking down at me. “They went for me?”

“Of course they did,” I said sitting up and facing him, legs crossed under me. “I told you we’d go back for you.”

Merle shook his head, “Anything ya told me that day just fell outta my head. Was not registerin’…”

“You don’t remember me telling you to wait?”

“Nope.”

“Shit… You didn’t stop for a moment to think that I’d never leave ya like that?”

“Wasn’t thinkin’ straight!” he rose his voice a little and lowered it again immediately. “Was high, kept seeing walkers all around, had to get the fuck outta there.”

I rubbed my face with a hand, “Well, they did. Daryl went back there, with Rick, Glenn and T-Dog.”

“Ah, right, Officer Friendly and Mr. Yo…”

“Damn, don’t start, Merle…”

“Look, I get it. I fucked up. But didn’t think ya’d want to go back for me anyway. Not after…” he stopped.

“Not after our fight the night before,” I finished it for him. “Didn’t matter the fight, wasn’t about to just leave you there to rot. Neither would Daryl. All ya had to do was _wait_ and we’d’ve been together all along. You’d still have your hand.”

“Hey, I told you I know I fucked up!”

“Shh!”

“’S whay I didn’t use again after that.”

I had a stop. “You didn’t use again?”

“No. Been clean all along.”

“Oh… Good…. Good for you.”

“Know all the shit that happened, getting handcuffed, left there, losing the hand, not finding you ‘n my brother again… Was all ‘cause of drugs. All ‘cause I ain’t got no control of anything when I was on ‘em.”

I was quiet for a long moment, his words taking me back to over three years in the past when I got to the same conclusion he did.

“I know the feeling… ‘S why I stopped too.”

He said nothing and I was thankful. I didn’t want to talk about what had made me quit.

“How’d it happen?” he asked nearly in a whisper after a while and I knew what he meant, so I told him all about what happened after he disappeared. The walker attack at the quarry, the CDC, Atlanta, the road, Sophia, the farm, the barn, Shane trying to kill me, my survival, Daryl’s screams. Merle just listened to all of it in silence.

“Motherfucker was alive I’d make him suffer for that…” was all he said, anger in his quiet voice.

“I know… I kinda wish he wasn’t dead.”

“Where ya think he at now? Daryl?”

“He’s with the group, looking for a place. He’d want to make to happen… What I planned for the group. A safe place, walls… Just like the one we just lost. But he ain’t looking for me, Merle. He’d’ve found me already, but he ain’t looking ‘cause he don’t know I’m still around.”

“We gonna have to then,” he said and I looked up at him, not understanding. “We gonna find ‘im.”

“That means this is for good?” I asked him. “You stayin’?”

He smiled, “Told ya once I got yer back, haven’t I?”

I smiled tearfully at him, “You did.”

It was good to have him back. One Dixon found, one Dixon to go.


	35. Day 178

Twenty-eight weeks pregnant. Almost five months since the world ended. Thirty-seven days since we lost the house. Three and a half months without the group. Without Daryl.

It was not all bad. We had good moments. Each one had kept their own car and we could carry a lot of things with us, things that made us safe and comfortable. We had weapons, food, water, and we got good in finding shelter. Basements were our spot of choice and we could stay in a place for about a week until all resources from said place were gone or if we were overrun. Our little four-way group, just like it had been when it was just Michonne, Andrea and I, worked great together. The three of them kept on looking at me for the most important decisions, but most part of time we all thought like one, sometimes we didn’t even need to speak.

Merle was… Adapting. And incredibly more capable of adapting I would have ever thought he was. Not being on drugs or even drinking anymore had changed him. Well, of course, he was still _Merle_. Hot headed, foul mouthed, surely an asshole. On the first few days, he came on to Andrea and Michonne like a thirsty man at the sight of water, but was slowly letting it go, respecting them more. But one thing he did from the first day on the road as protect. Merle was like our body guard, not that we needed it too much since the three of us were more than capable of fighting, but he took upon himself that this was his role, he would protect and defend us. This I had always known about Merle. Even when he was a bad person, he’d always had my back, had always protected me. The man was loyal to a fault. It was a Dixon thing. I would never forget how at the simple sight of me Merle had turned his back to the bandits he’d been working for, given up on a big, thriving community with all the comforts that came with it, and walked away with us to live the perils of homelessness in the apocalypse, all to be near me again. Not that I understood it completely. I didn’t really know why he was such a loyal friend to me. Not that I was complaining, of course. Having him around was good, he was even able to make me laugh and was showing the good parts of his personality.

He also made me feel somehow closer to Daryl and, incredibly, made me keep the positivity that one day we’d find him. My hopes went down many, many times, to the point I could give up and just accept Daryl was in the past, but Merle would have it. He was certain we’d still find him, just like he’d been certain he would one day find me and his brother. Merle had always though he’d find us together, at the same time, and not separately, but still. He believed it for real and made me keep faith as well.

That day we had been driven away from the bank we’d been holed up in for nearly a week by a small heard and the fact that the place was stinking so bad it was getting hard to breathe in, so we were on the road again. We had taken to drive only two cars and tow the others with ropes as a form of saving gas but still having all the cars.

It was a dirt side road, much like where our previous house had been, and there was an untrimmed, overgrown long hedge that went on for like fifty or sixty yards until there was a wide opening at a corner. I slowed down to a stop, looking at it. Seconds later, Andrea stopped her car by our side and I could see she and Michonne were also observing the same thing I was.

“What ya think’s inside?” Merle asked by my side.

“Let’s find out,” and I moved with the car again until we parked in front of the opening.

Inside we could see it was a paved street that elongated into the area, trees all around it and two or three houses barely visible, one of them pretty close to the opening. It was very quiet. The four of us came out of the cars, all thinking the same. We would do the same thing we’d been doing for so long: check, clear, loot, and if it was good, stay for as long it was possible.

It was a huge square shaped area, streets on two sides with the gateless opening right on the corner, and dense woods on the other two sides. It took us a while to round it all and make sure it was all closed – it wasn’t, really, there was a small metal fence gate on the back that led to the woods, weed overgrown nearly covering it all, rusted and locked tight. Getting back to the opening, we slowly and silently made our way in.

Before we could reach the first house, though – it was a mobile home styled house, we could see now, walkers came out of the trees and from around the house itself. Many of them. Refusing to shoot because of the noise, we dealt with over a ten of them before getting to the minuscule house porch. More were coming when Merle busted the door opened, no time to check for sound or look through the windows this time, and we entered. There were two more inside, which Andrea and Michonne killed off as Merle and I dragged a couch to secure the door with its ruined lock. Walkers outside tried to get in, loud groans and nails scratching the wooden door.

Still silently, we checked the house and found it was clear. It was a tiny one-bedroom trailer, fully furnished, with just the one door as a way in. I was already opening the kitchen cabinets trying to find anything useful and it was all there, like someone had been living there before the world ended and left without packing anything. There were bags of chips and pasta and cans of soup, meat and sauces. In the bedroom Andrea found a dresser filled with men’s clothes.

Merle was already sitting on the couch, groaning at his aching legs, when we all gathered there, the walkers outside still trying to get to us. Right by the door there was a table and booth and a window above it. Sliding into the booth and taking my knife out, I opened at the window a crack and hit the knife there on the windowsill to get their attention off the door. Using the crack, I started stabbing their heads, making them drop one by one. Michonne quietly approached and gestured me to let her do it after around ten minutes I’d been doing it, and kept on going. The number of walkers increased, their own kind attracting the attention of others, and then dropped again until no more were heard around the house. Outside, there was a pile of dead, fetid corpses.

“Let’s get the cars in,” I told them, the first word I’d spoken in hours.

We had to skip over the walkers’ bodies to get out of the trailer and then went back outside to get the cars. The noise of the engines attracted more of them.

“Son of a bitch, motherfuckers just keep comin’!”

“We’ll do the same again,” I said from his side in the car. “Go further, to the next house.”

The second house was a little larger than the first, and it looked a bit more well taken care of. The owner was still inside, a chubby little old lady who might have been a cute grandma once. It was not hard putting her down. This house was a two-bedroom, cozy little home with flowery curtains on the kitchen window and what had been daisies now dry in a vase.

Right across the street there was the largest of the three houses, painted in olive with white windows and a more spacious porch. This house was the next one we’d go in, but it was probably going to be the last one because it was going to get dark soon. We crossed the street on a quick run and tested the door before busting it open and found it unlocked. Al usual, Merle went in first and froze right there, the three of us hovering around his shoulders.

“Move Merle!” Michonne told him as we eyed the walkers that were coming close to our backs.

Instead, Merle put his arms up, his knifed stump in the air as he said, “No need to shoot, man.”

_Fuck._

Looking around him, I saw there was a man inside, a .12 shotgun pointed right at Merle’s chest.

“Incoming!” Andrea warned us and I had to turn away from the living man threat to deal with the dead ones. Still under the man’s aim, Merle didn’t move to help us, but he did step away from the threshold and back onto the porch. We were lucky there weren’t many of them on this tide. Finishing the last one, I ran back to Merle and rounded him as I dropped my bush axe and stood in front of him.

“Fuck you doin’?” Merle reacted.

“Hey, we mean no harm!” I told the man who looked from Merle to me. He looked like he was trying to be firm but his eyes betrayed him. He was scared as hell. “We’re just looking for a safe place, same as everyone else! We’ll just go,” and I nudged Merle with my back to his chest to make him take a step back, which he did.

“Will?”

 _Okay, what_? It was a female voice, weak and sounding real old, coming from the inside of the house. The man, _Will_ , turned his head nervously to look at the direction it came from and them back at us.

“D’you have company, dear?” she spoke again.

“No, Ma!” Will said nervously. “Was just someone at the wrong house. They’ll be goin’ away now!”

“Oh, okay. I just made lemonade, if they want some!”

“Go!” Will ordered.

“You got a group?” I asked him.

“Sam, let’s just go!” Michonne whispered from behind me.

“No group, but this is our house and you’re not welcome!”

“It’s just you in this place?”

“That I know of.”

“We ain’t a threat, Will,” I told him, trying to sound calm, my hands still in the air. “Were just looking for a safe place. We might stay in one of the other houses for the night, if you don’t mind.”

“How can I be sure you ain’t a threat?” he asked and his voice shook a little.

“You got an elder here, man,” Merle answered instead of me. “Wouldn’t harm an old lady.”

His shotgun went down just a little as he said, “Just stay away from my house!”

“We will!” I assured him and told the others over my shoulder, “Go on guys, let’s go back across the street.”

Behind me I felt them move backwards, Merle’s chest not touching my back now, and I saw as Will licked his dry lips nervously.

“You got any food?” he asked.

“Not much, but I can spare you some if you’re hungry,” I told him. “But only if you stop pointing that gun on us.”

He looked to his side into the house again and back at us nervously before doing so. We were still outside.

“She’s 97,” he told us. “She ain’t got a clue what’s happenin’.”

“I understand, Will. My name is Sam, this is Merle,” he looked at Merle who was hovering over my shoulders. “Andrea and Michonne. We really don’t mean any harm, okay?”

He nodded nervously, swallowing hard.

“She didn’t really make a lemonade, ya know.”

“Thought so,” I tried smiling at him, but my heart was still accelerated. “It’s just the two of you?”

“No, my sister’s out there, went looking for food. We wanted to go in the other houses but there’s always dead people inside. Can’t get bit and leave Ma alone.”

“Okay, just make sure your sister doesn’t shoot us when she comes back home?” I asked him and he nodded. “We’ll get you some cans, alright?”

“Ya sure ‘bout that, darlin’?” Merle asked me. “Man just had a fuckin’ shotgun pointed at my chest a minute ago.”

“Yeah, and we tried to break into his house. You’d do the same.”

“Ya sure ya can spare?” Will asked and eyed my stomach. “I see ya need it.”

“Wouldn’t give it away if we couldn’t spare it.”

I did give him some, we’d found a good amount in the first house and had all that we’d been carrying with us in the cars. We were good. We didn’t get to see his old mother then, we just went back to the house across the street and stayed there. Sun went down and we arranged a quick dinner – there was still gas in the gas canister outside, so we could warm the food up and boil the water that came out of the faucet. It was a clear water but you never know. After eating we make sleeping and lookout arrangements.

Merle wouldn’t take his eyes off the window and the house across the street. We could see the light of oil lamps in there and shadows inside. Once I could see three of them, which meant the sister had come back without us seeing it. Maybe the house had a back door. They didn’t get out or did anything else, though, but I could see Merle was worried and if I knew him well, he wouldn’t be leaving that window any time soon.

The house went silent and we lit a few candles to be able to see anything. I stood by Merle, looking out as well. There were crickets and cicadas singing outside and it reminded me of the quarry camp, the tents, and Daryl. As if on cue, the baby moved and I rested my hand on my stomach and I saw Merle look down at it quickly before looking out again.

I thought of when we were on the road and stopped at a gas station, right after we left Savannah. Daryl and Merle were bickering and I heard Merle tell Daryl not to hit on me and I hadn’t wanted to hear it that time, but now thinking of it I knew Merle didn’t approve the idea then. That’s why I hadn’t told him yet. He’d get mad at Daryl for doing what he told him not to do. For some reason… But I wanted to tell him, he deserved to know, especially if we were gonna find Daryl sometime in the future. I didn’t want it to be a surprise to Merle when I jumped on Daryl right in front of him.

“Hey,” I said quietly and Merle looked at me. I pointed at my stomach where my boy was moving quite energetically. Merle didn’t understand, so I reached out for his hand and pulled it so he’d feel it. His eyes went wide when the baby jumped under his palm. He’d never felt it before. “This baby? That’s your nephew,” I whispered. “Daryl may not have made it, but he wanted it. And I wanted it to be his too, so it is. That’s your nephew.”

His look was unreadable, expressionless, but his large, calloused hand still rested there. The baby stopped after a few seconds and I let his hand go and he withdrew it, but still looked at me.

“I know you told him not to,” I moved on. “But we did get together. For a whole four days before that fuckin’ night. And it was real. It was that real thing people talk about and I never believed I’d find.”

Merle looked out the window again, thoughtful. “Thought so,” he told me. “The way you talk ‘bout ‘im…”

“I love him, Merle,” I told him firmly yet gently.

He nodded and was silent for a long moment until he finally said “Told him not to come onto ya.”

“I know. Just don’t know why.”

“’Cause we Dixon’s no good,” he said bitterly ad looked sideways at me. “Known that my whole life. Thought ya could do better.”

“That’s not true, Merle. Fuck do you mean, _no good_? You two have been rocks in my life since that fuckin’ night at my place. Having my back, protecting me, being my friends, my _family_. Even before when you were a sonofabitch all the time, you were my friend.”

“Even when I tried to get you ta drink?”

His voice was so bitter when he said that, that I knew he’d been thinking about that night. He felt guilty, ashamed for what he’d done. And he should, it had been a shitty move.

“You did wrong then, Merle, but ya different now. A sober Merle’s a whole different person. I guess you just didn’t know that ‘cause you’d been drunk and stoned for too long.”

“Got told that ma whole fuckin’ life,” his voice sounded like a low thunder. “Old Will Dixon?” he said taking an unconscious look at the house across the street where the other Will lived. “Always sayin’ we were just like’im.”

“Yeah, I know all about the old Dixon,” I said angrily. “What he did to Daryl… And to you, getting you two to believe you were pieces ‘o shit like he was. He just wanted his boys not to be better than him and you both believed it. You even kept telling Daryl those things yourself, ‘cause you believed‘em,” and then I turned fully to Merle, arms crossed. “Well, ya know what? Old Dixon had no fuckin’ idea what he was on about. He didn’t know his sons the way I do now. Ya good enough, Merle. You good enough to be my family and Daryl’s good enough to be my man.”

I don’t think nobody had ever said good things to Merle before. I don’t think anybody had had his back. Nobody had been kind to him and that’s why he got fucked up like he still was, believed himself a piece of shit and therefore acted like it.

He was silent for a long time and I let the moment stretch. He was thinking hard.

“We had a sister, ya know?” he finally said.

“I know. Georgia.”

He nodded, “Meningitis,” he told me. “She was seven, just one year older than Daryl, I was fifteen. Ya reminded me o’ her,” I nodded, wordless. He’d called me Georgia up on the roof in Atlanta. “If that baby there’s my nephew…” he looked at me. “That means ya my sister.”

My eyes filled up with tears. That was it, this was my brother. I had a family. I had two sisters who were sleeping right now, and now I had a brother as well.

“Not that ya takin’ Georgia’s place,” Merle felt the need to say. “No replacing that little angel.”

I laughed tearfully, “I know that. And ya know, you my brother, Merle, but Daryl?” I shook my head slowly. “Daryl ain’t my brother!”

He laughed too saying “Don’t make this gross!”


	36. Day 179

The chest of drawers of one of the two bedrooms his house was filled with female clothes. Whoever lived here did not pack before leaving, which was good for me because they all fit me. I stripped to change all of it, glad to find even clean underwear on in the drawers. There was a full body mirror in the bedroom and I had a start when I saw myself. It’d been a long time since I looked in a mirror, except for the small one in the cars.

I looked totally different from what I remembered myself. The belly was obvious; round and protruding, looking bigger than my six months of pregnancy should because I was really thin. I could see my ribs, breast bone, and my clavicles jutted out, just like my cheekbones. I had a scar on my eyebrow where no hair was growing anymore, bruises in random spots all over my body. My thighs and arms looked stronger, though, from all the walking and running and fighting. My hair was terrible. I needed to cut off those dreads but I still couldn’t make myself do it. The roots had grown a lot now and I would only wear them tied up so they’d be out of the way. I didn’t like what I saw. I didn’t think I looked pretty or attractive now. I wondered what Daryl would think… I’d looked much better before.

Shaking my head and averting my eyes from myself, I got dressed on new jeans that I had to fold around my ankles so I wouldn’t step on them, and a black long-sleeved shirt. It wasn’t so hot anymore outside. Folding the sleeves right above my elbows, I got out of the bedroom to find my four companions already around. Andrea stood at the window looking outside, attentive, and Michonne handed her a bowl. Merle was sitting on the couch already eating from his own and there was an amazing smell of freshly brewed coffee. It felt homey, cozy, and I felt then that this could work. This whole area could be our new home if we made things right now.

“Sam, someone’s coming,” Andrea warned from the window. All three of us moved near her to see it and saw someone crossing the narrow street, coming from the other house and, seconds later, there was a knock.

“See any weapons?” I asked them because I couldn’t see properly from that angle.

“None visible,” Michonne answered.

So I moved to the door, Merle standing right on my back, his attention peaked, and I opened the door. It was surely Will’s sister, tall, tanned, long, straight hair pulled back in a tight, tall ponytail, eyebrows curved up, perfectly made. Though the probable months she’d been without her estrogen were visible on her lines, she was beautiful.

“Hello, I’m Mikki,” she stated firmly, head up bravely and showed her hands up, “Unarmed, just so you know.”

“I’m Sam,” I offered her a hand and she hesitated just for a second before shaking it. “Can’t say we’re unarmed ‘cause we ain’t.”

She nodded, “I figured. I’ve got weapons too but I preferred leaving them home. You fed my family last night, guess it’s the least I could do. Thank you, by the way. I was unable to bring any back yesterday and Ma… She needed to eat.”

“Don’t worry ‘bout it. You had problems out there?”

“My truck died. I’d found a lot of good stuff; it will probably still be out there if nobody found it. There are weapons as well, found storage in the basement of a gun shop that nobody had found yet, but I think all the food I got there is the most important part.”

“Food as weapons are just as important these days,” I told her.

“Why didn’t you bring at least the food with you?” Merle asked her from over my head.

“Got overrun,” Mikki explained. “The dead were all around and the packs were on the back of the truck, I couldn’t get it. Had to run.”

“So ya got a truck full of food and weapons somewhere out there,” he said again. “I say we go bring it back.”

Mikki nodded, but I stopped them right there, “Wait, not so fast. Come in, Mikki, let’s talk. We need to know more about this place.”

I stepped back and gave her space, Carefully, Mikki entered the house and looked around, now seeing the others standing there. She nodded at them as a greeting.

“This is Merle,” I pointed, “Andrea and Michonne,” Mikki nodded tersely at them again, probably feeling cornered and outnumbered. I pointed the table at her and we sat facing each other, the others standing up around the kitchen and living room. “So, Mikki. What is this place after all? A community?”

“Uh, it was supposed to be one of those self-sustainable communities people were beginning to build all around?” I nodded at her. “But investors backed up, some sort of crisis or something, so they didn’t really finish it. Just sold the already built houses for real cheap and never got on with installing all the things they wanted to install, not even the gate.”

“What kinda things?”

“Solar panels. They are on the roofs of almost every house but they were not properly installed, so they’re just there doing nothing.”

I shared a quick look with the others and looked back at Mikki, “What about the water?”

“It’s good water, comes from a mine, pressure pumps ring it up. We’ve been using it for years.”

“No energy needed for it?”

“Nope.”

I’d never heard of pumps that didn’t need energy, but whatever, I actually know nothing about water pumps, mines or solar energy…

“Do you think we could finish installing the solar panels?” I asked her.

“Maybe, if you know anything about it… There might be instructions or a manual of some kind in the office. All kinds of projects are stored there, probably something about the panels.”

Ok, too good to be true?

“We’ll take a look later… How many houses are in here?”

“Thirty-nine. Thirty-eight if you consider one of them is the office.”

“And the walkers?”

“Walkers?”

“The dead.”

“Oh. The dead are all over. Will and I never go further into the community, we just stay home and go through the entrance. Too many of them for us to take out, and we got Ma, can’t take unnecessary risks.”

I said nothing, just looked lingering at each one of my friends. Each of them nodded to my silent question. Looking back at Mikki once again, I told her. “We’ll clear it all. Each of the houses too. It will be safer for you and your mother.”

“What are your plans for this place?” Mikki asked me. She surely knew we wouldn’t be doing it from the goodness of our hearts.

“We plan to stay. We don’t want to just survive; we want a home. A safe place to grow and thrive. You’re here before us, so you’re staying if you want to.”

“You want to make a real community,” she affirmed.

“Yes. If you and Will want to, you can be part of our group, work with us. We’ll teach you how to handle the walkers better, I saw Will was scared yesterday. We’ll have your backs if you’ll have ours. Everyone will have a job and everyone will work hard. Things won’t be easy, but you and your family won’t be alone anymore.”

Mikki said nothing, looking straight into my eyes for a long moment, thinking. After a while, she blinked, breathed and looked down, some sort of emotion there that she couldn’t keep holding.

“It’s uh…” she tried to start. “It’s not been easy.”

“I know…”

“Ma, she’s… She’s ninety-seven and she’d got Alzheimer’s, and Will takes care of her around the clock. So I’m out there by myself looking for stuff, medicine, food, all to keep her well and safe, but…” her voice shook and she looked at me again, her eyes shining with tears. “She doesn’t even know what’s going on. She thinks we’re just too poor to have enough food.”

“We can help, Mikki,” I told her. “Being alone these days ain’t safe. Been sayin’ that from the beginning, we’re safer in numbers,” I took a look at Merle then, he surely remembered me saying that on the road when I decided we’d join the others. “But we gotta know you and your brother will be 100% with us, that you’ll have our backs too.”

Mikki had a tight-lipped smile, eyes still shinning when she nodded at me. “You help us keep her safe and comfortable and you got it.”

“Good,” I smiled and looked at the others. “Looks like our group’s just grown!” they smiled nodding too, accepting it. “First things first, Mikki. You let Will know what we’ve agreed and then Merle will take you to your truck,” I looked at him. “Take the ropes with you so you can tow it back here, alright?”

“A’right boss!” Merle moved from his position where he’d been leaning against the kitchen counter and clapped his hand once. “Let’s go get that shit!”

Mikki thanked me and left through the front door to go to her house before they left, and I stopped Merle before he could follow.

“Hey, listen,” and he stopped. “Seriously, Merle. Full respect with her, that clear?”

“The fuck ya talkin’ about?”

“You know damn well what I mean, Merle.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever. He can kill ‘em walkers, got my respect.”

“She!” Michonne said as she passed us to go outside. “She, Merle!”

“Yeah, she,” I completed. “Don’t go calling her he. She ain’t a he, get used to the pronoun.”

* * *

There was a wired fence inside the hedges all around the community, or so Will told us. With his help, Michonne and I checked the whole front part of the hedge to see if there were no holes while Andrea guarded the entrance. After that, for the whole rest of the morning, we moved further into the community, the street we’d been in so far ending at a corner and elongating left and right. Right in front of us there was a square with a pond in it, many trees all around. We decided to turn left and entered the house right at the corner. Two walkers down in there, three more on the street until we reached the next house. We noticed the houses had space to spare between them, as if there was still space for new buildings later on and community growth. All this space between houses gave us a lot of possibilities because there was plenty of land, grassy areas, trees. No thinking about that now, we needed to clear it all. There were too many houses and it would be a lot of work.

When the sun was right above our heads Will, Michonne and I were stinky, sweaty, blood spilled all over, and we’d cleared eight houses in total, lost count of how many walkers. At least most of them were confined into the houses, so they didn’t close upon us dangerously at any moment. As we returned, Merle and Mikki had just arrived, Merle’s Jeep towing Mikki’s Hilux along the street. They parked right between the two houses.

“You can’t go in there like this!” Mikki told her brother as soon as she hopped out of the passenger seat of the Jeep. “Ma will freak out!”

“Yeah, I’m fine by the way!” Will said. “Been killing walkers all morning, comes with a price!”

“Good for you. Now go shower before she sees you! I’ll go in to check on her,” she then turned inside the card and took out a heavy-looking bag. “Thanks for your help, Merle!”

Will did wash, and then we all had lunch together. There was even bread on the stuff they brought in – infused with preservatives, obviously, because they were as good as fresh, and only after that, we started unloading the cars. Two or three walkers came attracted by the noise but honestly? We didn’t really care much about them anymore at this point. Sometimes they were just fucking annoying. I mean, just let us be for a moment, for fuck’s sakes! Even Will, who’d been nervous about facing them before this morning had already relaxed a bit and was the one to kill one of them without hesitation. It was good to see people learning things and getting braver.

The wooden crates all on the asphalt, we started opening them and _damn_. Holy damn, seriously. We were packed now! They were great weapons, shotguns, pistols, a machine gun, and over half of the crates had ammo in them. What a find! Mikki came out after feeding Ma lunch and she was celebrated. Not even she knew how good her looting the day before had been.

But it was when I opened one of the few last ones that my heart gave a somersault.

A crossbow.

Brand new, dark grey… A crossbow.

All the other paused too, looking at it and at me, checking on my reaction.

“What?” I heard Will ask but nobody answered. “Seriously guys, _what_?”

“They, uh…” Michonne started. “They know somebody who used a crossbow. Someone who’s disappeared out there.”

“Oh.”

I leaned down and lifted it from the box. There was still plastic in a few parts of it and it was heavier than I’d imagined, but I picked it up.

“Got arrows?” I asked to nobody specific and saw Merle was moving to the rest of the unopened boxes. If he found arrows, this was it. This was my weapon. And he did, there was a pack of something like fifty arrows. I had no idea how to use the crossbow, but I’d learn. My heart was tight and my throat painful when I turned away from the group carrying my crossbow and the arrows.

I needed to be alone.

Damn, that fucking hurt.

I was already sobbing as I rounded the house, finding a step behind it to sit, laying the crossbow on the ground in front of me.

“ _I’ll teach you the crossbow if ya’d like_.”

It was unreal how it all had happened, how it’d been months as we were still apart. Sometimes I couldn’t believe that because of the hurt masculinity of a fuckin man everything in my life had crumbled. _Shane_ … I hated his guts so much, I wished he was alive. I wished I’d been the one to kill him, but for what Andrea had told me I guessed it’d been Rick. Shane had taken all from me. I was rebuilding, but I didn’t have to have lost it all. My group, those people… I wanted them back. I wanted them here, working with me to make this place our home. It would be so much easier with all of them here, we’d clear it all up in no time. They had to be here. But the sadness and longing I felt for my group was nothing compared to the hole in my heart, the ache in my chest that Daryl’s absence had left.

I needed him back. And I wanted to learn how to use this crossbow. I guessed Merle knew how; he could teach me… But no. Daryl said he’d teach me. If he wouldn’t, nobody would. I’d learn by myself.


	37. Day 184

It was a pain in the ass having to have someone guarding the opening at all times. We were six people, but usually, only four out there working in the area, as one had to be on the gate and either Mikki or Will commonly stayed in with Ma. Poor lady was a sweetie, she thought we were new neighbors, friends of her children. She had no idea what was happening and all of us had decided it would keep this way. I wanted to clear it all, make it safe, close the entrance, and them Ma would be able to come out of the house, walk around a little, see the trees and the birds. I thought she’d like it.

So we needed a fast solution for the entrance. Mikki and I had found the projects for the gate, but there was no material at all. What we also didn’t have was anyone who could understand the project fully and who’d know how to execute it. But either way, we needed to close it all. So today we were going out there to check a junkyard and a recycling center Will told us about in the hopes of finding something useful. At least I didn’t think too many people would have thought of looting junkyards.

The town was a real cute place. The abandoned houses had an American flag in front of them, porches with swinging chairs and it was like only grandmas had lived there, it was so cute. It was dead now, though, eerie and silent, nature claiming it all back. We entered a few houses just out of habit trying to find useful stuff. In one of them, I caught Merle staring at a bottle of whiskey he found in a cabinet. He didn’t see me looking as he stared at it, a hand holding the cabinet open, for long seconds. And then he closed the door, leaving the bottle there, not touching it. When he turned he saw me and stopped. I nodded at him with a proud smile.

Mikki and Will had stayed home, so it was the four of us again today like it was before. Seeing the wooden, white house we’d been in completely devoid of anything useful, we headed out the front door.

There is such a thing as too little fear. We did not check the outside, we didn’t look around the porch, we just opened the front door and went out, and that nearly got Merle bit by the walker that was there, reaching hungrily for his arm.

“Merle!!” I yelled, but I couldn’t see more, I didn’t see if he killed the walker with his knifed hand, because in an instant there was a whole crowd of them coming from the side of the house, some pushing their way into the door, some going to Merle on the porch, separating him from us. Inside, Michonne, Andrea and I tried pushing the door closed against their force, our full weight against it, but the glass on the door broke, the shards raining down on us.

“We gotta run!” I head Andrea say when it was clear we could not hold them, their hands and arms now inside trying to grab our heads and hair.

“There’s no back door!” Michonne reminded us.

Yep, the fucking house had no back door. I mean, _seriously_?!

“We gotta run upstairs!” I yelled and paused before completing, “Now!”

I leaned down to take the crossbow from where it had fallen in the ground and ran. The first walker was on Andrea’s heels as we ran and climbed up the stairs, but they were thankfully slower than us so we were able to reach the upstairs corridor before they could come up, and we entered the last bedroom of the house, closing the door behind us and locking it. Seconds later they were there, scratching and groaning. Michonne and Andrea were dragging a dresser to block the door as I moved to the window and lifted it open, poking my upper body out to look for something, for _Merle_ , for an escape.

“Merle!!!” I yelled, hoping for something. The fucking walkers had been too goddam close to him.

There was the roof of the porch right under the window and I could see a few last stray walkers crossing the street and going into the house, but they were not many, we could deal with them. Most of the crowd was already inside the house, the door of the bedroom creaking dangerously under their force.

“We gonna have to jump,” I told them both as they stood by the window by my sides.

“Are you insane?” Andrea screeched. “You can’t jump!”

“Course I can!”

“You keep forgetting you’re pregnant!” Michonne agreed with Andrea.

“What do you suggest then?!”

Before any of them could speak, there was a loud, piercing honk noise coming from the street, making them put their bodies out of the window to look at it as I was. A car came down the street, one of ours, slowly and honking like crazy, and Merle put his head out and yelled, “Come and get me motherfuckers!!!”

And surely enough, as we laughed in relief that he was fine, the walkers started going in his direction, a tide of them coming out of the house, even though their noise on our door still continued. The honking would not be enough to attract all of them. Merle kept driving slowly, making them follow him, honking and yelling and hitting his hand on the car.

But the door broke, large splinters pointing into the room as the uncountable number of walkers tried to get in through the gaps, squeezing, groaning, skins getting caught on the wood. Too many to deal with.

I pointed the crossbow at them, knowing damn well it wouldn’t be enough if they got in. “Get out! Get out!” I told them and kept my aim, not seeing them get out but trusting they would. Michonne called my name once they were out and I turned to leave as well. Just as I passed, she had the mind to lower the window closed after me. We walked to the side, away from it, and could hear them at the window now, trying to follow us. The glass wouldn’t hold for too long, maybe even less than the door did.

Months ago I’d have jumped down with no second thought, but not things were different. I hesitated, I had the big belly going on and I just couldn’t jump. Merle was still honking somewhere, we couldn’t see him anymore, but the herd following him was visible.

I placed the front of the crossbow on the roof, stuck my foot on it and leaned down to pull the string up. It was tight to pull but I was getting used to it and did it fast. Hearing it click in place I took one of the five arrows from the holster and armed it. Michonne had walked to the left on the roof to take a look at the side of the house, and I did the same to the right. The roof continued to neither side, so we had to stay there.

“We’ll have to wait,” she whispered. “Merle will come back.”

It must have taken over two hours. The sound of the walkers in the windows slowly diminished. The glass panes had broken hours ago but they hadn’t been able to break the wood parts, so they couldn’t get out. The three of us sat with our backs against the house, quiet, and they lost interest. The herd had disappeared too and we had to wait for Merle to come back to pick us up, but we got impatient. We didn’t even know if he was fine, maybe he was the one who needed our help now.

I stretched my neck to the side to carefully look into the bedroom through the panes. There were six walkers in there, dormant, looking at nothing. Six was easy.

“Hey,” I whispered and they both looked at me. “Six. Let’s end’em and get the fuck outta here.”

Andrea was going to say something against it but Michonne got up just as I did, also clearly tired of being here. So I faced the window from the outside, took aim and, for the first time, was able to finally use my crossbow to take down a walker. _Oh, that felt good_! It was thrilling, the sound of the arrow leaving the barrel, sharply cutting the air and perforating the skull as if it was butter. I understood why Daryl liked the thing so much.

The other walkers did not understand what was happening, just groaned at the movement of the other one falling. I lowered the crossbow to cock it again and was done in seconds, and the second walker fell to my arrow. Oh, the chills on my spine! It was only then the other four noticed us and came back to the window, growling to get to us, but on each side of the window, Michonne and Andrea dealt with them with their knives as I cocked the crossbow again. One extra walker came into the room from the corridor and I shot it before it could cross the bedroom.

“You’re getting good with this thing,” Andrea told me making me smile.

We opened the window and got in again. Just inside I armed it again before bending to take back the three arrows on the walker’s heads, and then left the room in before the others, crossbow raised and aiming at any threat that could come. I shot one more on the stairs and its dead weight rolled down the steps loudly, knocking down another one on its way and trapping it under its body. The ground floor was empty, apparently, all the ones that had been there had followed the honks outside. This time we checked the porch before leaving the house, it was clear. Our cars where there on the street and we ran towards it, but from the corner, we heard a car approach. We didn’t know it was Merle so we ducked behind a few bushes in the garden, only to get up a second later when he called out to us.

“Come on, evil triplets, let’s get the fuck outta here!”

Incredible how hearing Merle’s voice could make me feel so relieved! We ran to the cars and took off behind him in no time. I could see walkers coming out of the neighboring houses on my rear mirror but we were gone.

And then it happened again.

There had been signs of a junkyard on the road a few miles back and we were following them, heading east. The little walker driven town was far behind us and we were now approaching its neighbor town. Our car’s breaks screeched loudly when that fucking giant herd appeared right in front of us after a curve. It was big, must’ve been bigger than the one that had closed on us on the road the day Sophia disappeared. The sound of the screeches did nothing to attract them, though, they kept on trying to get over one another to get to something that was in front of them, obscured by their putrid corpses. Behind and beside my Hummer, the others started backing down with the cars slowly and silently, but I remained there.

The walkers were after something. Or someone. If they were still attracted by it; it was probably alive. If it was alive, they wouldn’t be for too much longer with that huge herd on them. Could be anyone, could be my group, could be Daryl, or could be just a person I didn’t know and needed help. So I didn’t back off with the car. Instead, I grabbed the binoculars I had in the glove box and got out of the car, only about fifteen yards between me and the backs of the nearest ones, and climbed up the car until I was standing on its roof, and I looked.

There was a white van among this enormous circle of walkers. I couldn’t even see its cab, only the roof of it and the tallest part, and I watched as a man climbed out of the cab through the sunroof and reach down to help someone else up. They looked vaguely familiar but it was impossible to see from this distance. A woman came out, grabbing the man’s hands, and they both stood there for a second looking around and they climbed up the tallest part of the can. Now I could see them fully as they looked all over, walked from one end to another of the van, trying to find a solution. No apparent weapons on them. The man lifted his hands to his head, as if understanding they had no escape, just as the woman kicked away the hand of a walker that got too close to her foot.

I slid down from the roof of the car to the floor without any more thoughts. I stood on the step of the open door so I’d be high enough to make the other three car drivers hear me. They had stopped backing off from there and we're waiting to see that the fuck I was doing.

“Back’em around!!” I yelled gesturing to them. “And then ya honk like a motherfucker!!”

I didn’t wait for an answer, just entered the car, which was still on, and pressed a button on its panel, turning on the cd player. I knew exactly what dc was in there, so I put the volume in maximum. The first notes of _Seek and Destroy_ exploded on the sound boxes and I felt a huge thrill. When the second verse started my head started bopping up and down with the music and I yelled in joy. Incredible how good that felt! Smiling, I closed the door and looked at the herd. It was working, the last ones had turned to our direction and already taking the first steps to get to us. Behind me, the others honked like crazy as I started backing off slowly, following them. In minutes, the whole herd was following us, and I was having way too much fun backing out and letting them nearly get to the front of my car and them accelerating away again.

“Stop fucking around!!!” I heard Michonne yell from her car. Oh, she was mad, cursing and all. She never cursed.

Oh, let’s just quit it. I accelerated back so I’d have time to reverse the car, and then I reached the side of her car.

“My bad!” I told her.

“Are you fucking insane?!”

“Sorry!!” but I kept on before she could answer. “Let’s find a way to get around and get to them! There’s a couple, they need help!”

Merle happened to have been in the area before and thought he remembered a side road we could use. He was correct, and we returned to the road quickly, just a bit ahead from where the white wan was still in the middle of the road. We stopped near it and there was no sign from the two people. Silently, we all raised our weapons. Michonne poked me and signaled she’d seem movement from under the van, meaning there were people behind it. We went around the van, Andrea and I on one side, Merle and Michonne on the other. I had the crossbow ready and, when I reached the end of the van, took a one-second breath and rounded it, pointing straight to a man’s face. He had his hand raised with a knife and, behind him, the woman did the same towards Merle.

“Drop it!” I said, pointing at his face. “Now!” He hesitated, fearful but keeping his brave stance. “We just saved you from that herd, the fuck you think we’ll do to you?”

He looked over his shoulder at the woman, both of them trying to decide what to do, and at that moment it hit me. He’d looked familiar from afar, but now I saw it. I felt like laughing, but I didn’t.

“Drop it, Morales!” I told him and his eyes widened as he looked back at me.

By my side, Andrea left the protection of the van to look at him. “Morales!” she said opening a smile, and she tried going by me to approach him. I took a step back and stood in front of her, blocking her way. She couldn’t approach anybody who had a knife raised and ready to attack, it didn’t matter if we knew him.

“Andrea?” he asked and let his eyes slide from her to me. “Sam?” his voice shook as he said it and his hand lowered a bit. I took it as a good sign and raised my head from aiming position looking through the scope.

“What’s up, Mo?” I asked, a little smile escaping my lips against my will. “It’s alright, please drop the knife, you both.

Miranda, on his back, did it first, her hand grabbing his arm to make him drop the knife and then turned to me, letting me know it was safe. So I instantly lowered the crossbow, a laugh coming out of me in a huff.

“You’re finding people you know _again_?” I heard Michonne say.

“Shit, Sam…” Morales said, disbelief and relief all over his face.

I hugged him with one arm. It was good to see him, but not so good it made me oversee their demeanor. The absence of their children. How thin and pained they both looked. Miranda hugged me after and I could tell she was holding back her emotions. Merle stood a bit afar, outside our little reunion as Andrea also hugged them and I introduced them to Michonne.

“The others?” he asked then.

“It’s just us,” I shook my head. “Got two more you don’t know back home, but the original group… We got separated from them months ago.”

“They’re out there,” Andrea completed. “Somewhere.”

“You got a _home_?” Miranda didn’t miss the implication.

“Yes. ‘Round fifty miles west. You?”

“We’ve been on the road all this time… No home.”

“You can come back with us if you want. Stay?”

They wanted to say yes immediately, a _fuck yes!_ , but something made them both hesitate as one. They looked at all of us until their eyes fell on Merle and Mo tried to say something but couldn’t really form the words. And then he nudged me away, alone. Miranda stayed with Andrea and Michonne and Merle leaned against the van lighting up a cigarette as I walked away a few steps with Morales.

“What’s worrying you, Mo?”

“Uh, to be honest? Dixon,” he paused. “He’s… Back?”

“Yep. He’s back. He’s part of this group, real important one, and he’s staying,” I told him firmly to make no room for questions. “But I know why you’re worried. The way he was at camp, what happened on the roof. You were there, the last thing you remember of Merle was that scene, I get it.”

He nodded, “Good. So… I don’t know.”

“Mo, listen. Merle’s got his personality and that ain’t changing. But he ain’t the same anymore. No drugs now. He’s got this group’s backs like it’s his family. You stay and you have his back too? He’ll have yours. You don’t have to be friends, but I assure you that we’re better with Merle with us.”

He thought for a moment and then nodded, pressing his lips together. “Ok… Okay. Alright. If you’ll have us… We’ll stay.”

I smiled up at the big man, “Good. You got a home now then. You and your wife will even have your own house.”

He looked like he could cry at any moment. I’d have to have him tell me what had happened to them in all those months, but it wasn’t the moment.

* * *

Morales had been a welder a few years back, he told us. He knew how to weld and thought he could make something up for our gate. A sent from the fucking heavens. So we loaded a big truck Merle found in the junkyard shed with lots of metal parts and welding instruments he guaranteed us he knew how to use.

Night fell too quickly and we decided to stay there for the night, sleeping in the cars. There were enough people to keep watch now, so it was safer. I laid on the back seat of my Hummer after we are jerky and canned spinach as a dinner, and tried to get some sleep.

Our group was growing and we did have space for that. It was a big area, 39 houses, Mikki had told us. I hadn’t counted yet, we had still to get into all of them. The land was pretty much clear now, we didn’t see stray walkers on the streets and land inside anymore. After cleaning all the houses we’d have room for lots of people. I started making a list of steps in my mind. One, set the gate. Two, finish clearing the houses. Three, set up one of the houses as storage for food and weapons, and make an inventory. Choose someone to be responsible for it. Three, clean and organize houses for each one of us. I wanted to choose my own, I’m sure the others would too. But anyone could share if they didn’t wish to be alone. Four, check the land, soil, find a gardening tools and seeds and anything else we could, as we had on our previous home, as start a planting stuff. Check is any of the trees inside were fruit trees, if not find some seedlings if there were any still alive out there. Five, built coops and find chickens or ducks or turkeys, any kind of livestock. Six, find Daryl.

With all the car doors closed, I was in silence and warm, and feeling safe with five road companions around, so I allowed myself to relax. My eyes heavy, I pillowed my head on my right arm and looked down at my own body. Down there, partially hidden by my belly, Daryl was between my spread legs, his hot, wet mouth on me, his tongue lavishing me, his low voice moaning in pleasure for having me in his mouth. I reached down to him, my fingers threading through his hair, and sit up a bit so I could see him. He looked up at me, his clear blue eyes glued on mine, watching my soul, seeing me sigh and bite my lip. Never looking away, he entered me with two fingers and I whimpered and whispered his name, feeling the warmth bubble inside my lower belly, my hips jerking against his mouth. He felt so fucking good I felt like crying, my head fell back and I closed my eyes, allowing myself to come in his mouth.

It was day when I opened my eyes and I was alone in the car, clothes on, the wetness in my panties originated from a sweet, delicious dream. And I did cry.


	38. Day 219

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dark, dark times ahead, my friends. Tags are there for a reason. Bear with me.

Contrasting with the heat I’d felt inside the car with my dream, it was chilly outside the morning after we found the Morales’. There’d been a solid, heavy sadness inside my chest as I opened the back door and let my legs fall outside. My throat was tight and I just wanted to go back to sleep. Maybe I’d dream of him again.

God, I hoped he was alive.

_Please, don’t die…_

But as always, stuff happened to take my mind off it. That morning, in came as the sound of _barking_. Loud, thunderous barking, clearly from a large dog. I got out of the car to look around just as the others did too, we all looking at each other trying to understand it. Seconds later, the barking stopped and we saw it. The dog was running towards us, fast, looking back over its muscular shoulder twice.

 _Oh, for fuck’s sake, don’t make me kill a dog!_ Walkers, fine. People? If I have to. _But a dog_?!

But it didn’t attack us as we’d been prepared for, all weapons ready. It stopped and turned looking to where it had come and as if on cue, a herd showed from behind that huge pile of wrecked cars. Like twenty, thirty of them. The dog, smart thing, didn’t bark again, just stood there nervously, pacing and looking around at the living people it had found.

“Let’s move!!” I yelled at all the others from where I was standing at the side of my car and moved to close the back door. Before I could, though, the dog had sprinted over, startling me like hell – damn, that was a big dog – and jumped into the car, crashing loudly against the inside of the opposite door.

With the herd coming I had no time to make any decision. I closed the back door, trapping the dog inside, and opened the driver’s, hopping in and turning on the car. I looked back over my shoulder to reverse the car and the dog was there, breathing hard with its tongue out.

“Please don’t attack me!” I told it and reversed.

Our five cars – including the truck with all the metal scraps and Morale’s white van – got out of the junkyard, the walkers nearly catching up, but we left them behind quickly. My heart was pounding; it all had happened so fucking fast! I had been sleeping, like, two minutes ago and now I was accelerating on the road back home with a huge, bulk gorgeous dog on the back seat.

“Holy fuck!” I let it out, and as if I was calling the dog, it placed its large head right by mine between the seats and started smelling my face. It had terrible breath, seriously, but I did nothing, I let it smell me and it didn’t seem threatening. So as I drove I lifted a hand to it, letting it smell me there too. It did for a moment, then stopped, passed between the seats, flopped down the passenger seat and started panting with the tongue out, it’s face looking adorably like it was smiling.

“Well, hello!” I caught myself speaking sweetly to the bulk dog as I reached out to pet the large head. “How the hell did you end up here?”

If it had an owner, I was sorry, but there was no way I was going back there to look for someone. Too many walkers, I wasn’t endangering myself and my group to reunite a dog with its owner. But taking a better look at it, I saw it was muscular but simply because it was probably a trait of the breed because I could see its ribs and how thin it was on the sides. It’d probably been out there for a long time.

“Hey, you a boy or a girl?” I tried to see, still petting it, looking from the road to the dog repeatedly, and I was able to take a look. “A girl, alright! There you go, we girls gonna stick together then, right?”

She had a short, light brown coat with a large white spot on her neck going down her chest. Her head was huge, similar to a pit bull’s, her ears were cut to make them pointy and her eyes were a beautiful honey brown. And she was huge, really too thin in the middle for her size.

We took over one hour to get back home. During this time, the dog had slid from her seat to my lap, where she laid and let me pet her all the way back home. It was like she was starving attention, as well as food, most likely, and she basked on the attention. Shit, I had a dog now! She jumped out of the car just a moment after me and followed me around as I walked over to talk to the others.

“Welcome home, Morales family!” I told Mo and Miranda as they got out of the white van. “This is it,” I gestured around, at the opening, at the first houses we’d been staying in and down the street.

“Wow...” Mo said looking around. “This is amazing, Sam…”

“Well, it’s good, ain’t amazing yet. There’s lots of work to do yet, the first thing will be to set the gate.”

“Yeah, I see why it’s so important,” he says eyeing the big opening. “If I can see the projects I think I can start working on it right away.”

“Have a rest first, ok? You two can pick a house for you, just stay close to the others, there’s one right on the corner down there,” I pointed to the end of the main street. “It’s already cleared of walkers. After we clear them all you can pick any house you want.”

Then I introduced them to Will and Mikki, who were a bit wary but welcomed them. By now the dog had also been welcomed by everyone. She was a clear image of what people call a gentle giant. She let everyone pet her, licked their hands, and only after a while she took off to look around, smell the place, probably pee all over.

When the Morales’ drove their van slowly to the corner so they could unpack the little belongings they had on the corner house, I sat on the steps of the house I’d been sharing with Merle, Michonne, and Andrea to have something to eat. The dog sat right in front of me, never trying to take the food, but staring with huge puppy eyes, so I got back into the house to get her a bowl and in there I emptied two cans of tuna. Going back outside, I put it down and she tried to get to it immediately.

“Wait!” I told her and he stopped instantly, sat on her heels and looked up at me, expectantly. Uh, interesting. Whoever her tutor had been, she was a well-trained girl. I allowed her to eat after a second and she swallowed all the tuna in no more than two bites. Damn, it was gonna take a lot of food to maintain her. I decided to call her Honey because of her eyes, and because I had never seen a dog named Honey.

Now it’d been oven a month since she came home with us, since the Morales’ were here. With a group of eight, one elder and one dog, we were building a place to call home. The gate was functional, Morales had done an incredible job in partnership with Merle and Mikki, and now it was a tall, sturdy metal gate that slid sideways and had strong locks. Also, we’d built a wooden platform where we could climb up and watch the whole entrance and outside area, it was where people kept guard at all times on a scale.

After I filled Honey’s bowl with her dog food, I had a cup of unsweetened coffee and a bowl of oatmeal with raisins for breakfast and was out of the house through the back door with the first daylight. Honey took off to take her morning pee as I stood for a minute looking at the lake.

A deep breath, hand on my stomach, a grounding moment to face the day.

I had already picked my own house and was living alone there. Each one of us had our own space, except for Will and Mikki who shared the house with Ma, and the two Morales’. Merle had stayed in the one we’d shared in the beginning, Morales and Miranda decided not to move from the first one they stayed in at the corner. Across from them at the corner and by Merle’s, Michonne had picked hers. Andrea was her neighbor on that street, the one the circled the lake area. As for myself, I’d chosen a more isolated one. The street around the lake area was a big circle that covered most part of the community and returned to the corner of the main street. In it, a few small streets originated, little cul-de-sacs, and mine was at the very end of one of them, its back to the lake, lots of trees all around, and it was quiet. The house was a one-bedroom, trailer-like, the front door opened to a living room with a good couch. The living room was separated from the kitchen by a small counter, this was also small but had lots of cabinets, and I had gas and running water. By the kitchen, there was a small 4 seat table. Ahead there was a tiny corridor with a door to the bathroom and another to the bedroom, which took the entire back area of the house. A double bed, a dresser and a wall mirror, and that was all. It was smaller than the one I’d live in for so many years in Savannah, but it was better. It was mine.

Honey came back to me after doing her morning routine and after a pet on her large head – the girl had been gaining weight and now looked even stronger than she did before; she surely was intimidating - I started my morning walk. I had taken on doing it every day before going to the entrance of the community were all the others lived. I walked among the trees around the lake, taking a look at the fruit ones – we were not in season, so no fresh fruit for a while. Reaching the back hedge of the community, I walked along with it, checking if it was all okay, including the little gate which locks we’d reinforced, and then went back to the street, circling the whole community. I went to take a look at the coop construction, which seemed nearly done, all we’d need now was the chickens, and at the vegetable garden, where we’d been growing a few things from the seeds we looted from a gardening store – an imitation of what we’d done before at our first house.

Things were good here. We needed more people, of course, and there sure were enough houses to call it a town one day. We’d named it simply _The Village_ because it had been the official name of the place we’d found on the projects at the office. _The Village Mobile Home Park_ had been the planned official name before the investments had been cut off and it went on without even being named. Lots of people had lived here though, even without the concretion of the self-sustainable community plans. _The Village_ needed a population, needed more people to work on the land and the security and on building up for the future.

It needed my original group.

We all had well-defined jobs. Morales was responsible for planning and executing constructions. He’d made the gate, the platform, was working on the chicken coop, and he’d been drawing the plan to build a brick wall around the Village, just inside of the hedges. He had help of all others to perform the constructions.

Miranda, the sweet, God sent woman, had nursing experience and she was taking care of everyone’s health. Every other day one of us would get hurt by something and the was the one to take care. She took inventory of the medicine we brought home, controlled stock, cleanliness, she’d medicate and bandage us and even the dog, who once got a huge splinter on her paw and needed care. Miranda had been monitoring my baby’s growth, would listen to the liquids and blood flow with a stethoscope, measure my belly weekly, made sure I took the little vitamins we’d been able to find around. She was very dedicated. We had transformed one of the houses in an infirmary – it was the one across the street from Michonne’s place – and Miranda took great care of it. 

Merle was responsible for security, and the irony was never lost on me because he was doing the job Shane once had done. And he was good, I don’t think he’d ever known he could be good at something like this. Even with all things considered, back in the previous life, Merle would have been a hell of a good cop if he’d wanted to. He took care of the watch schedules – always one person up the platform and another circling the inside of the Village’s hedges in three-hour shifts – and the organization, maintenance, and stock of all weapons. He also went out once a week to go hunting and sometimes stayed out for as long as two days, and would rarely come back without any meat for us all.

Andrea was a valuable assistant to various parts. She helped Miranda at the infirmary when it was needed, then helped Merle with the planning for security, then Morales with the projects, and she even helped keep to take care of Ma – who was now believing she was her daughter and adored her company. Also, surprisingly, Andrea was the best cook among all of us, although Miranda was a great competition, and she was getting a taste in cooking family meals for everyone every now and then.

Michonne took care of the runs. She was always out there, she’d decorated the area maps in her head and would show me all her plans for runs, telling me exactly where she’d be and where she was planning to go next. Someone would always go with her for safety and so they’d be able to carry more stuff. She always brought the most different sorts or cargo. Once she brought us a whole set of walkie radios, with spare batteries and all, and we now used them to communicate inside the Village and small distances outside too. There were also baby clothes and bottles and cans of formula, even a disabled crib, a stroller and a baby bath. She brought clothes, towels, bedclothes, blankets, pillows, washcloths, toiletries, cleaning products, furniture, mattresses, wires, ropes, seeds, seedlings, all kinds of canned and dried foods, candy treats, weapons, ammo, arrows, once she even came back with military armor. She was good in recognizing the hide spots of stores, the underground or attic storage rooms nobody had looted yet. There was a maximum-security prison nearby, just around 9 miles away through the main roads that Michonne wanted to go take a look. She’d seen it from far and it was totally infested by walkers. If all the inmates had turned while in there the inside must be the proper sight of hell. She believed we could find valuable stuff in there, mostly weapons and armor, but she was reluctant to try.

Mikki took care of the general maintenance of the Village. She’d worked with the landlord before the end and she knew this place like her own hand. She kept the water pumps going, and with Morales, had made sure the solar panels were working. It was not a lot of energy, just enough to have the lights on at night in the houses, to turn on the electrical stoves, keep a small refrigerator going, and to have warm showers every couple of days. It was incredible. Mikki was also always checking on the fences, plumbing and anything else that broke or needed repair.

Her brother Will could never get involved in too much because he was the primary caretaker of their elder mother, but he did take guarding shifts at the platform, sometimes went out with Michonne on runs and helped the others on small necessary things.

And as for myself… I was the leader. I knew how to do everything the others did, and what I hadn’t known, I was learning. I made the decisions and gave orders and approved or disapproved ideas, and they all heard me. I was overseeing the whole Village and I knew constantly everything that was going on inside the walls and with each one of the family. These days, however, almost thirty-four weeks pregnant, I was slowing down, even though I didn’t want to. I got tired easily, my back hurt, the heartburns were killing me and my feet looked like loaves of bread in the end of the day. The others wouldn’t let me carry heavy things, walk too much, and Merle was insisting I’d let the crossbow go at least until I was back on my feet after the baby came. I did not let go of my crossbow, though. Never.

* * *

I was training Honey. She was a great learner, seemed always eager to pick up new tricks. She was unbelievable in her obedience to me. I’d had no experience with dogs at all, so it couldn’t be a talent of mine. I was sure Honey had belonged to someone who’d trained her before, so she was used to commands and following them. She’d chosen me to be her leader now, and I adored it. Honey was a huge, muscular American Bully, absurdly smart and a total sweetheart. Now I was with her near the lake among the trees testing a few commands. She was playing around, sniffing trees and stuff, and I gave her two short, quick sharp whistles. She immediately ran to my side and stopped there, facing the same way I was. Then I pointed to the ground, leaning down just a bit, which made her lie down. Then I walked away and she stayed, eyes always on me, but unmoving. I gave her the two whistles again and she ran to my side. Such a good girl!

My radio came to life on my waistband just then, static preceding the message.

“Goldilocks, I need ya at the gate pronto,” it was Merle’s voice. “We got company,” I was already moving, Honey on my heels, as he continued. “Hell, gotta have ya’ll nearby just in case.”

_Shit._

I took the last few yards by running and quickly climbed up the platform where Merle was planted, looking outside. Sure enough, there was a group of four men outside, ragged and thin like all of us still living people must look like these days.

“What you want?” I asked instantly, observing each of them.

“We’re starved!” the one upfront said. “Please…”

Well, they did look starved. “You name?”

“It’s Charlie, ma’am,” he said humbly. “These are Tom, Phil, and Nick.”

Each one of them nodded at me the mention of their name. I thought those names sounded made up.

“Where ya coming from?”

“We were trying to get to the coast, see if there was help there. Before tried Fort Benning.”

Silence. I looked back and behind me to share a look with Andrea, who was standing down there with a .12 in her hands. What if, after all, my group had decided to go there? If they didn’t know Shane killed me because of the Fort Benning idea, they may have tried it.

“What was it like there? Fort Benning?”

“Was down, ma’am. Exploded and overrun. Corpses wanderin’ around all over.”

“Did it seem recent? Or down for a long time?”

“Uh… I’d guess a long time, ma’am. There was no fire nor smoke, just the burned building, and the corpses. Pro’ly a long time.”

_Please tell me they never went to Fort Benning…_

I nodded gravely at the man. I needed to check if they were safe, I’d been thinking how I’d deal with a situation like this for a while now. At some point somebody was bound to find us, ask for help, to want in, it just took a while for it to happen.

“You armed?” I asked.

“Uh… Just the knives. Gotta have’em these days.”

I nodded again. Sure, he was right. “Did you cross too many of them?”

“Yes… Many of them.”

“So you know how to deal with them?”

“We mostly avoid’em, run… But when we gotta, yeah. We know how to deal with’em.”

“What about people?”

“Ma’am?”

“People out there. How do you deal with’em?”

“Uh… Uh… We, uh…”

Man, if for him answering to this question was so fucking hard I knew I wouldn’t like the answer. But as he stuttered, another one of them, I guess I’d seem him nod at the name Nick, took a step forward and said, “We do what we gotta do, miss,” his voice was more sure and more firm than Charlie’s. “How we kept alive so far.”

Fuck.

“And care to tell me what is it that you _gotta do_?”

“People you find wandering around there don’t share… Miss. Sometimes what separated us from death was the things people didn’t want to share.”

“You mean you took things,” I said to confirm. “And killed’em?”

“I know you’ll understand, Miss. Can’t have a place like that and not take things and deal with’em out there.”

Holy shit, this was getting dark. I just nodded, as if I thought what he was saying was normal, and he continued.

“If you let us stay we will do it for ya. Work, I mean. We’ll earn our keep.”

Merle leaned down, resting his hands on the top of the fence on the hedge, staring right at them. He had a smile on his lips and was nodding, then looked sideways at me and gave me his opinion by shaking his head minutely. I obviously was thinking the same he was. So I looked back at them.

“You hungry, we’ll get you a bag with some provisions,” and I looked back at the street where the others were and nodded at Will, who nodded back and ran into the first house right there, where we kept out stock. “But ya can’t come in.”

“Ma’am?” Charlie said again, a pleading in his eyes.

“We don’t take strangers in. This is a closed community.”

“But, ma’am –”

“We’ll work for you!” the other said. “Whatever we gotta do.”

“You not once offered your services to help with maintenance, cleaning, lookouts… Ya offered me your services to steal from and kill people out there. Ain’t the kind of service I’m interested in. 

“No! I said whatever we gotta do, if what we gotta do is cleaning then we’ll do it.”

“I’ve made my decision.”

Will came back with a heavy bag and I turned around to climb down the stairs making a gesture for Morales to open the gate and I took the bag from Will. I walked out with it hanging on my shoulder. Upon the platform and behind me, I heard all the others’ weapons getting cocked, ready. I stopped in front of Charlie and Nick and slid the bag from my shoulder and handed it to them. Charlie took it, placed it on the floor and opened it, his companions coming to look over his shoulder.

“That all?” Charlie said.

“You’re kidding me?” Nick said from his side.

Oh, motherfuckers. The bag was not bad at all! There were at least fifteen varied cans inside and about ten bottles of mineral water. It was certainly gonna help the get along until they could find some more.

“Keep complainin’ and I’ll take it back,” I told him.

Nick straightened his back with a can in his hand and I saw so much hate in his eye that my hand closed over the handle of my pistol. This seemed to anger him even more, to the point of desperation, because even with at least four weapons cocked and pointed at him, Nick struck, a knife quickly sliding from his sleeve to his hand. My reflex got me turning my torso to the side because his knife was plunged right towards my belly.

He’d seen it. He saw my pregnant belly and was so… Indescribably son of a fucking bitch that he tried to stab me there.

Not fast enough. Caught by surprise, not fast enough.

I turned but not enough by inches. The blade cut through the left side of my stomach and stuck in there. It was all very confusing after that. I heard shots, many of them, and then all the man in front of me fell dead on the asphalt, and then I was falling myself, shocked by what had just happened, paralyzed from fear and pain. Terror like nothing I’d ever felt before, comparable to the feeling of Shane strangling me, swooped into my veins, making me cold, frozen. And then I was getting carried away, people were screaming all around me but I didn’t hear a word, the world around me a blur of color and sound, but nothing was felt anymore, just the cold, solid terror for my baby.

Then I was in a high bed and Miranda and Andrea were all over me checking the stab, trying to figure where it had hit me, if the baby was fine. I could barely breathe, waiting for a signal that it was all fine because if it wasn’t I would ever breathe again.

Time had no measure anymore because it felt like an eternity and like just a few seconds until they decided it hadn’t hit me anywhere vital nor on the baby. I have no idea how they got to that conclusion, but then they were taking the knife off and it hurt like a motherfucker, making me scream and try to get away, but hands of other people kept holding me know, saying it would be fine, calm down, but I was out of my mind in pain and still shocked and panicking from the stab.

Merle was there, holding my face in his hands, and told me firmly that I was fine, wasn’t too hurt and that the baby was fine. _The baby’s fine_ , he repeated over and over, trying to get to my head, Slowly, he did and I stopped struggling, letting Miranda and Andrea work cleaning and stitching the cut, that apparently had only been superficial.

Apparently I had turned quickly enough, after all.

I kept repeating it like a mantra in my mind, _I’m fine, the baby’s fine_ , but convincing my body was another whole thing. Things were calmer around me again, everyone relieved it hadn’t been bad, when the first pain came. I doubled over, sitting up and then the panic around started again, nobody understood what was happening.

Miranda said it could be just a natural reaction of my body to the stress, that I needed to calm down, relax, get it past, get some sleep, and it might be over, but I’d need to be closely observed so someone would stay with me tonight. I was taken back home and my sisters started taking shifts watching me, and I knew even when one of them wasn’t there, they weren’t sleeping. Michonne, Andrea and Merle were around all the time, watching me as pain after pain it came back, never fading, just getting closer together. Miranda came back when it was clear it was not just a stressful reaction.

I was in labor.

_I was in labor._

Painful, sharp contractions every fifteen minutes, and then every ten. At less than eight months of pregnancy. _No, no, no… Too soon! Too fucking soon._ But they kept coming, and Miranda checked me and… God, the worry in her eyes when she removed her hand from me. There was fear and sadness there when she told me I was getting dilated, ready for birth.

I was in early labor.

He was coming. The baby was coming and he wasn’t ready, I knew he wasn’t ready. He’d gone through too much, he needed as much time inside as he could have to be ready to be born, he could not come out now. He wasn’t ready, _please, please, he ain’t ready_!

Michonne didn’t leave anymore. She sat with me in bed, held my hand, and didn’t leave me alone for any second. Right there too, was Honey, lying on the mattress with me and whining, knowing something was wrong. When the pain was gone she’d come near for me to pet her, trying to give me some comfort.

I was incoherent, my thoughts all over the place and in a pain I hadn’t imagined. I hadn’t allowed myself to think about labor because I was scared of it. With no resources, no medications, no hospital, anything could go wrong, so I just avoided thinking of it. And it was all happening now.

Merle came and went, pacing all over the house and around it, but when my contractions seemed to never go away anymore and Miranda measured me again, he stayed. It was time. My boy was coming. Merle sat behind me to keep me propped up and Michonne held my hand and encouraged me. I sweat, screamed, hit Merle’s legs and squeezed Michonne’s fingers and cursed with all the words I knew.

It took no more than three hours from the first pain to the moment he came out. He came out. My baby was born. Miranda held him, cleared his airways, pat his back and got him to finally, _finally, God,_ whimper.

He didn’t cry. He whimpered.

Miranda lifted him and showed him to us all. My boy… He was so small, so tiny, a wrinkled little thing and he was whimpering, his little chest working hard, trying, trying so hard… I reached out for him and she handed him over. I rested him on my chest, liquid and blood all over and someone placed a sheet on top of him…

And I cried. I cried because I knew.

I had a baby and he was right here, real, he existed. I looked down at him, his little face, held his tiny hand between the tips of my fingers and spoke to him, rocking back and forth. Merle got up from behind me and was looking at the baby and at me and Michonne was crying by my side, but I didn’t look at anyone, I didn’t lift my sight from him even for a second.

I looked at him for his entire life.

I kissed his head, his hands, I talked to him. _I love you, my angel. You’re loved. You’re beautiful. My little angel, my precious little boy. I love you so, so much…_

I held him in my arms during his entire life.

I had suffered and cried painfully many times in my life. Many times in the past few months. But nothing had ever, nor ever would again, hurt this much. Nothing had ever hurt and would never hurt me as much as the second I realized, a couple of hours later, that he wasn’t there anymore. That he’d stopped breathing, losing the fight.

He fought. He fought hard, my brave little warrior. He fought his entire life. He was held and loved for his entire life.

* * *

Mich and Andrea washed me as they’d do to a baby. I was limp, just letting them. The cleaned me, dressed me, took me to bed. I don’t think it was my bed, it was some other one, but it didn’t matter. I didn’t care, I fell asleep.

I woke up to Miranda checking on me and Merle making me drink some water. He said something, I didn’t register. I woke up again to Michonne petting my hair, saying I had to eat something. I woke up again to Honey licking my hand, trying to get me up. I woke up again to Andrea forcing spoons of broth on me. I woke up again feeling I needed to pee. Woke up again when I peed all over myself. Woke up when they took me to shower again.

No matter how much I wished I wouldn’t, I kept waking up.

It was hell, I didn’t want to wake up anymore. I don’t know what day it was, how long it’d been, I just knew he wasn’t there anymore.

He was nowhere, he was not inside my womb, he was not in my arms.

What was I even alive for?


	39. Days 230 to 238

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning!

Day 230 was the day I was gonna die.

Not day 73 as they all thought, as Daryl thought.

No, it would be on day 230. A whole 157 days later. And oh the irony… It was not walkers who’d kill me. It was not people.

It was me.

My legs were weak and trembling when I got up from the bed. Disuse, after 10 days unmoving in bed, a weakness for eating so little all this time. Honey was there. She never left my side. She hopped down from the bed with me and followed me out. I managed to leave through the half-opened door. I didn’t know whose house I was in; it didn’t look like anyone of theirs. I couldn’t care less, though. I entered the bathroom, leaving the door open and saw Honey lay down there, sleepily watching over me. I avoided the mirror completely and sat to pee. It was a real clean bathroom; someone'd been taking care of this house. And of me.

I wouldn’t bother them anymore.

Getting up, I accidentally took a look at the mirror. I saw a ghost. That wasn’t me, not anymore. That face wasn’t mine, those protruding cheekbones, those hollow eyes. Sam was gone and she’d been for a long time now.

Of the three small drawers on the counter, I opened the first. Just a few bathroom things, toothpaste, two toothbrushes, and scissors. I stared at it in there for a long minute. I could use it. I could split open my wrists and die the way the world made us all now, bleeding. But as I looked at myself in the mirror again, I made another decision.

My dreads dropped cut off to the ground one by one. I took my time, holding each in my hand for a long moment before cutting it off as close to my scalp as I could. I wasn’t crying, but tears rolled down from my eyes anyways as my head felt the loss of the weight I’d been carrying there for so long. Dropping the scissors on top of the pile of brownish-yellow dreads, I rubbed my hands in my hair, feeling the shortness. It was uneven and pointed in several spots.

Honey followed me quietly out the door. I was on Circle Street, one of the houses that’d been empty, I recognized now. It was chilly and I hugged myself, looking up and taking a short, shallow breath. It was late night, probably near morning, and everything was quiet and dark. I walked slowly to Main Street and stopped halfway there. Ahead and up in the platform, Merle was on guard, smoking a cigarette and looking out. He didn’t see me. Honey was just as silent as I was when I entered Merle’s house, dark and empty. Passing by his kitchen, I saw a pack of Morley’s and a lighter on the table and took them with me as I went straight to his bathroom, knowing what I was looking for. As predictable, it was a mess and didn’t smell good, but I didn’t give a shit. Inside a drawer, I found his shaving machine. I knew he’d have one, he always kept his head clear of hair.

Lighting up a cigarette after too many months felt bittersweet. It felt good, my addiction to them happily satisfied, but the fact that now I could smoke didn’t pass unnoticed. I took a long, deep drag with my eyes closed, feeling a little bit of lightheadedness as I puffed out.

For a while, the only noise was of the machine. Staring at the mirror, cigarette between my lips, I shaved it all. Right to the scalp. I could see I had small cuts and scars in there I didn’t even know of. It’s just how life was now. Once I removed any trace of hair, I turned it off and ran a hand over my head. That was better. No hair. Not the same Sam anymore.

I didn’t let Honey follow me out. She whined but didn’t bark when I closed her inside Merle’s house. I walked away with my chest tight because I knew she’d follow me anywhere and I wanted her safe, so she couldn’t come. I walked silently to the gate, the Morley’s pack on my pocket and yet another cigarette lit between my fingers. It was time for the change of guard at the gate so I was able to slide out without Merle or Mikki noticing me. At that moment I was like a shadow.

I had no weapons, no car, just a pack of cigarettes and the roads. I walked slowly and silently, like a ghost. On my feet, a pair of sneakers, not made to walk for too long. On my scalp, the cold air of the minutes before sunrise sent me chills to my entire body. I didn’t care.

It was so many things amounting to this decision… The end of the world, no hope, people who had gone so bad they’d stab pregnant women in the belly. My group gone… My Village running well without me. They wouldn’t need me leading them anymore, not this ghost. They’d be fine. Daryl gone, I was never gonna find him again. And now… Did I even want to anymore? He had mourned me and the baby. He had suffered his loss already. How was I supposed to find him, make him hope the baby was fine and then tell him he was gone? He’d suffer it all over again. I didn’t want to make him go through it. I didn’t want him to feel what I was feeling. It’d been months, he’d be moving forward now, only with the memories but probably with no pain now. Maybe… Now I didn’t even want to find him, and the wish to do so had kept me going all those months. Three things had kept me going: my baby, the plan to build a place, and finding Daryl and the group. I had one failed, dead. One achieved. And one I didn’t want anymore.

Nothing else to fight for.

It was day already when I reached a street with a few stores. I don’t know how I got there, and it didn’t matter. I entered the first store, a little raid-out grocery store and walked around. My feet crunched stuff on the ground, broken glass, shelves, making noise I usually wouldn’t make. I rounded the cashier counter. There was money still in there. Under it, there was a locked cabinet. I knew from my old times the kind of things stores kept locked. It was probably what I was looking for. It was luckily a pretty weak lock because I was able to burst it open with a piece of metal fairly easily and, sure enough, there it was.

I left the store with three bottles. Tequila, whiskey a vodka. No wine, which would’ve been my choice, but whatever. On the parking lot in front of the stores, an abandoned car. It wasn’t too dusty, so it probably wasn’t there for too long. There were a couple of walkers coming from around the stores. I ignored them and sat on the driver’s seat, closing and locking the doors from the inside. The cd player in there still worked and there was a cd on the glovebox, entitled in a handwriting _Greatest Songs of All Times_. Good, let’s judge what people thought were the greatest songs of all time.

It started very well with Bohemian Rhapsody. Tequila accompanied it. The first gulp burned my throat and brought tears to my eyes, my taste bugs aching, my brain making connections it hadn’t done for a long time. It wasn’t as pleasurable as I thought, so I took a second gulp, and it felt a little bit better. By the end of the song, where I shriekyly sang with the lyrics, making different voices aloud, it didn’t even burn anymore.

Aretha Franklyn got me screaming _Respect_ as I kept on drinking. I was already dancing on the seat when Elvis sang Hound Dog. Numb, thinking nothing, wondering why the fuck had I ever stopped drinking in the first place. I felt like a professional singer but probably sounded terrible screaming _Hit the Road, Jack_ as I stared as the walkers by my window. I didn’t even know I knew the lyrics to Under Pressure but I sang it all, the herd of walkers all the noise attracted my audience. I was Lennon singing _Stand by Me_ , I was Michael singing _Smooth Criminal_ , I was Aretha again saying a little prayer.

I was everyone, except for Sam. I wasn’t there.

I couldn’t even see anything outside anymore. The walkers were all over. In front and behind the car, right and left and even on top, and even if there weren’t so many, I would be seeing anything, my head fuzzy, nothing making sense. No pain. Nothing hurt anymore, I was just singing and drinking and dancing.

Numb. Gone.

* * *

Day 236

The world was a mess of blinding light and deafening noise, all spinning and blurry, making my head turn and hurt. It felt like it’d explode. I had no clue what was happening, where I was, whose voices were those. Was this what being dead was like? I remembered trying to be dead, had I succeeded?

“Daryl?” was the first word I was able to say, my throat rough and lips chapped. He’d know what was happening, he’d help me. He had my back. Except…

 _No, wait._ No, no… I was still alive. Daryl wasn’t here. My baby was dead. And how the fuck did I get out of that car? I was supposed to stay in there forever, until I died of drinking, of hunger, of walker bite, anything. How was I here? And where was _here_?

“Welcome back, Sam…”

Merle? Calling me _Sam_? He never did. Sugar, darlin’, goldilocks, sweet-ass, anything on his redneck vocabulary, but never Sam. It made me force myself to focus on his face, my head exploding at the effort until I was able to see his expression.

No smile, no jokes. He was sitting in a chair by my bed, elbows resting on his knees. His eyes were sunken. By my side on the bed, Honey moved her heavy body closer, resting her head on top of my stomach. My much smaller looking stomach…

“What happened?”

“Got back home after watch and found the dog in. Hair all over the place. Knew you’d been there so went looking for ya. Gone… Got Mich and went out looking for ya. Found a shit ton ‘o walkers surrounding a car, music on, all the goddamn dead from miles around going at it… Had to make more noise than ya to get part of’em away and kill the rest, but got to ta. Out like a rock, vomit all over. Ya lucky ya didn’t breathe that shit in.”

 _Lucky_ … I snorted, looking away from him to the ceiling.

“Ya don’t think ya got lucky? Fuckin corpses were this close to breakin’ in and eatin ya alive!”

“It’s what I was there for, Merle,” I told him firmly but my voice felt weak. “You weren’t supposed to find me.”

“That what ya wanted? What you was tryin’ to do?”

“Yes. It was. You risked yourselves with all the walkers to get me out but you shouldn’t have. Ain’t worth it.”

“Ya talking shit right now, sis. Ya not on yer right mind.”

I shook my head and turned to my side, giving Merle my back. “Just… Leave me alone.”

He took long seconds to move, silence filling the room behind me. Honey snuggled with me and I threw an arm over her body. She smelled clean… Someone had been taking care of her. Good, not even Honey really needed me anymore. Better for her. I eventually heard Merle get up and slowly leave the room. I was glad to be left alone, I just wanted to sleep and nothing else, but it wasn’t even a minute until I heard movement again. I looked over my shoulder at the door and saw Michonne standing there, holding the door handle. I said nothing, just stared back at her. Her face was sad, pitiful, lips tight because I knew her, she was trying to suppress something she wanted to say.

I looked away, staring at the wall again.

“Do not pity me, Michonne,” I told her and the bitterness in my voice scared even myself.

“I don’t pity you, Sam. I understand you.”

“If you understand me you should’ve left me there.”

“You really think I’d ever leave you to die? Just like that?”

“Yeah, great. Thank now. Now just leave me the fuck alone. All of you”.

She did leave after a moment, taking a while just like Merle had, and I knew nothing else after that. I fell asleep, Honey’s warm body comforting me, and must have been there for hours. I was miserable, smelling, in dire need to pee but with no wish to get up at all. I might just do it right there. I had small, quick dreams as I slept, more like flashes of image. The baby in my arms. The man’s knife coming in my direction. Daryl screaming at the farm. Walkers all around the car. Honey getting eaten by the dead. My image on the mirror, no enlarged stomach. Myself alone and naked in the woods.

Andrea came in eventually. She looked just as depressed as the others had as she took a seat on the chair by the bed. She said nothing for a while, and I didn’t move to look at her behind me. I was probably going to fall asleep again, ignoring her, when she spoke.

“You wish you were dead right now, don’t you?”

Ok, this started differently from the others. I said nothing.

“You wanted to die, and they stopped you from it. From going on with your choice.”

 _Oh._ Oh, okay. She’d gone through it. She’d tried to die before and someone stopped her. Slowly, I turned in bed to my other side and looked at her. “Dale stopped you,” I said.

“He did. And I hated him for it. You all heard… He had no right to take the choice away from my hands. He made me stay alive and keep feeling all those things I was feeling. Things I didn’t want to feel anymore…”

Damn straight.

“They hurt too much… The fear of all in my bones… The need to seem strong because this need had always been part of me… To prove I was strong. It was overwhelming. And the loss… My little sister, such a good person, so much better than myself, just gone like that, turning into one of those things… I couldn’t bear it, I wanted to be dead and not feeling. And he took it away from me.”

Tears had escaped my eyes even though I didn’t really cry. I knew it, and now I understood her completely. I hadn’t, not really, back then.

“But then…” she started again. “It got…” she stopped to think of her words. “Less painful. Slowly, gradually, so slowly sometimes it felt like nothing in my feelings was changing, but over time… I’ll never forget her, it will never stop hurting that she is dead and everyone else I knew from before probably is too. It never will… But I learned how to live with it, how to move forward. And who I am now… Things I’ve learned, how much I feel I’ve changed, and most of it all is thanks to _you_ , would never have happened if Dale hadn’t stopped me that day at the CDC.”

I closed my eyes, tired. Of course, she’d get to this, saying I shouldn’t hate them for saving my life.

“You hated him, Andrea,” I said weakly.

“I did. It’s why I understand what you’re feeling for both Merle and Michonne now. I get it, I’ve felt it. But it passed. If I ever see him again, I’ll tell him that no matter the things I told him back then, I am grateful now. Because of all the things I’m living now, learning, growing, building in this place? I’d have nothing of it if he’d let me blow up that day. I wouldn’t have this family we’ve built. I wouldn’t have built this good relationship I have with Merle, I wouldn’t have you and Michonne as my chosen _sisters_. I just didn’t know it back then.”

All her words made sense if I was rational about them. But I wasn’t. All I could feel was this pain inside my chest, drowning me, and I couldn’t see how one day I’d be glad to be alive again. I just couldn’t see it… I said nothing, just wishing she’d go and let me fall asleep again.

“I know you don’t see it now,” she moved on. “If someone told me those things back then, I would either. But you will… One day you will. You just gotta stay alive until you get there. Just say alive _one more day_ , one at a time.”

I didn’t see her get out, because I kept my eyes closed, thinking of those last words.

_Just one more day. One at a time._

* * *

Day 238

“Alright, time to get the fuck up!”

For the first few seconds, I had no idea what was happening. My blanket was pulled back roughly from me, coldness startling me like hell, and then hands were grabbing me, pulling me up and off the bed like I was a puppet. When I registered it was Merle getting me off the bed and could muster any kind of reaction, he had pushed me all the way to the kitchen already.

“The fuck you doing?!”

“I’m getting ya out of that shithole you dug yaself into! Out, now!”

Things were spinning, my head hurt, I felt like vomiting. I wanted a drink and I recognized I was probably in withdrawal all these days, my body shutting off and depression making me sleep through most of it.

“Get off me, Merle!” I shouted at him, trying to get him to let go of my arm.

“Ain’t gonna happen, sweetcheeks! Ya comin’ with me.”

He dragged me out to the street. I was barefoot, wearing a thin camisole, bald, probably looked like hell, but still, I fought him. I kicked and screamed for him to let me go, he was hurting my arm as he made me walk with him. I saw the others around looking at the scene, shocked, but Merle didn’t mind them. He rounded the house, dragging me to the woods area, straight in the direction of the side hedge, my bare feet on the dry earth. In any other moment of my life, I’d been able to fight him off, defend myself, but now my mind was blurred and it was like I didn’t know any self-defense movement, nor would I have the energy to do them if I did. So I just yelled, cursed at him, called him all the names I knew. Soon he stopped and turned to me, both hands strongly grabbing my shoulders to make me look at him.

“Shut up now!” he yelled. “Ya sad, bottomed down, I fuckin’ get it!”

“Then let go of me!!”

“But while ya been in bed drowning or out there drinkin’ and tryin’ to get yaself killed, we all been here! Watching over ya! Taking care of the Village! Keeping ya and the place safe!” and then he roughly turned me, making me look away from him, his hands still holding my arms from behind, “and getting your boy a proper resting place!”

Then I saw what he wanted to show me. Where he had dragged me to.

My baby’s tombstone.

I stopped struggling and stared at it, unable to look away. They were unbelievable. It was so well made, so carefully thought and built with the little tools we had these days. The stone was made of concrete and stood over a mount of earth with fresh grass starting to grow on it, a rectangle of stones pained in white and fresh yellow wildflowers adorning it.

Merle let go of my arms.

On the stone, they’d written it in the same white paint.

_Jack Dixon-Danes._

My dad’s name. Daryl’s name. My name. _Jack Dixon-Danes_.

Merle said nothing else, just stood there behind me, out of my sight but solid. I slowly sank to my knees and let myself fall to the ground as I stared at it. They’d done this for him, carried him out there, paid their respects, buried him. It had to be hard for them too…

“Jack…” it came out a whisper and it made Merle move. He lowered himself to the ground by my side, a little behind, crossing his legs.

“We had to choose it for ya… Michonne knew your dad, said you’d like it.”

I nodded. She was right. The woman knew me back then, knew me well now. I hadn’t chosen the name before, deciding to choose when I saw him, but Jack had been one of my main options. I closed my eyes, allowing tears to spill. My heart had been thundering ever since Merle woke me up, and it was now slowing down, calmer. Even so, I allowed myself to cry, mourning the loss of my son, permitting the pain to come to the surface. I’d been avoiding it for too long.

Merle held me as I cried, pulling my back to his chest, firm and unmoving for a long, long time, and he kept saying things. He told me how he knew nobody was suffering more than I was but they were all mourning too, and to make it worse they had almost lost me as well. He told me how important I was to all of them, how I was family, his sister, and that Jack was a Dixon and I had taught him that being a Dixon was not a bad thing. He said he had a missing brother and a nephew in heaven already, couldn’t lose me too.

It was amazing how transformed Merle was. And I, apparently, had a part in it.

After crying out all I had to cry right now, and after a while I was just sniffing quietly, looking at Jack’s name and still near Merle, my back no his chest, my head fallen on his shoulder.

“I’m sorry, Merle…”

“I know ya sorry, darlin’. But ya ain’t gotta apologize.”

We got up from the ground what felt like hours later. I was sore and weak. Strangely, for the first time in all those days, I felt hungry. I had more important things than eating to do right now, though. Merle left me in front of Andrea’s house, giving me a kiss on the forehead before heading away. I watched him go thinking of how lucky I was to have such a brother now, an inevitable comparison between the Merle he was for the entire time I knew him before, and now. Feeling my eyes welled up and my nose prickling, I turned and climbed the few steps to the porch of Andrea’s house and knocked.

As if she’d been waiting for me, Andrea opened quickly. Seeing me there, she smiled with her lips closed, a breath coming out and tenderness all over her eyes. I extended a hand to her and she took it with no hesitation, and then I led her out to the front yard and to Michonne’s place right by hers. Still holding Andrea’s hand, I knocked and, again, it was like she was waiting for me, opening in a second.

Michonne had the same tenderness in her eyes seeing me there, but instead of a smile on her lips, hers trembled with emotion and she pulled me to her, hugging me tight and crying. I let it go as well, sobbing with her. There was something about being held and feel the empathy of a woman who also had lost a child. She understood. She knew how I felt. Miranda would know too. This thought, as terrible as it was to know both women had suffered it, comforted me somehow. I was not alone.

Andrea, Michonne and I spent the night together that day, at Michonne’s place. I was hugged by Andrea too, her height making my headrest on her breasts and she shushed me tenderly like a mom would. We sat together at the table, had dinner and dessert, then tea, and talked a lot, with no stopping. I told them all I was feeling, deciding not to hold anything back. I told them I’d wished to die and hated Michonne and Merle for saving me. I told Andrea what I understood what she’d gone through months ago when she was the one who wanted to die, and that her telling me so a couple of days ago had helped more than she thought. I told them I didn’t even really want to find Daryl and the others anymore for fear of telling him what happened to Jack, for being terrified of seeing him suffer. I told them I still didn’t know how to move on with life now and that maybe I’d never know. I told them how much I wished that tea was wine. I told them I loved them, thanked them for being there for me, thanked Michonne for going out there to save my life, told them they were my family.

And the three of us cried a lot that night and fell asleep all huddled up in Michonne’s bed.


	40. Until day 308

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nothing proven about the ideas presented in this chapter. Don't do drugs, you guys.

So this motherfucking life tried to break me.

_You bitch._

This fucking fate or destiny wanted me down. Kicking me down a deep well to find rock bottom and throwing shit on top of me to bury me down there.

_Well, guess what._

_Jack’s mom_ wasn’t going to say down there. _Jack’s mom_ might hurt and cry because she’s human and would never not be, but she just wouldn’t fucking stop.

I’d rebuild using that fucking rock bottom as the bedrock of the castle I was going to build.

So every day I would wake up with the sun, wash my face, drink strong coffee and go out there. With the shaved head, with the non-extended belly and without a baby in my arms. But I went out there, head high, crossbow hanging from my back, and I worked my ass off. I ran the Village, I went outside, I killed walkers, I scavenged, I took my guard shifts, I made decisions, I oriented the others, heard their opinions and ideas, went back home, washed up and started it all over again next morning.

And I’d smoke a lot of cigarettes. And I’d constantly crave for a drink.

While I was gone, Michonne had stepped up as the leader and she’d done a wonderful job. Things kept on going as planned, the chicken coop Morales had planned was done, now all we needed was birds, and he had started building the wall inside the hedge. There was a huge pile of bricks at a corner of the Village, cement, sand, all the works. It would be slow because we didn’t have enough people, but it’d get done.

Michonne and Merle had gotten even closer and were great friends now. Andrea had been hanging out a lot with Will and she liked Ma’s company. Ma had been sick lately, nothing specific. She was simply ninety-eight. I spent days thinking about having a conversation with Will and Mikki about her. If she passed away on her sleep or something like that and nobody saw it… She was going to turn.

I’m not even sure how I knew this. I’d seen D dying from a stab and turning, I’d seen many walkers wandering without a visible bite mark, so I was pretty much sure anyone who died would turn.

Although Jack never did.

Thank the Gods I didn’t even really believe in.

But I thought there was a strong possibility Ma would turn when she passed and we’d all have to know how to act in this case. I needed to talk to them.

But I hadn’t yet. It was sensitive and I was running from it. I started going out there alone again, with the same old excuse of looking for signs of Daryl and the group. I did look for signs; I did… But I was lying. To everyone, to myself. There was a laundromat on a little town nearby and in there I had created myself a little hideaway. To myself, to be alone and mourn and hurt without anyone seeing it. And to drink. I had hidden bottles there and I controlled myself, never got too drunk, or so I thought. It’s the mentality of the addict, always thinking we’re in control, always believed it’s no harm, it’s just a little drink, no problem. I’d return home after a few hours and nobody noticed, so why should I have to stop? Everything was fine, I was in control.

What I didn’t see, couldn’t really understand then, was that when I was drinking the thoughts in my mind were always terrible. It made me feel worse, it made the pain even more painful, instead of numbing me, it made me think terrible things; when I slept under the effect of the alcohol my dreams were disturbing, full of walkers, Daryl turned, Michonne and Merle turned, Jack in my arms trying to bite me. It was awful, but my addicted mind could not understand that taking another shot to forget those images did not work at all. So I kept on.

Merle knew something was up. He may not know exactly, but the way he’d been looking at me with suspicious eyes was clear. He knew something was wrong. I mean, still wrong. Or maybe he was just worried because it hadn’t been long since I lost my baby, so I was obviously not fine.

One day he told me now I knew how to shoot with the crossbow and was good at it, I could take a step further and learn how to hunt, maybe even track. He’d been the one responsible for going hunting once a week bringing us all any kind of animals he could find, and he said it would be good to have someone else able to do it in the group. He was right. As I leader I should have thought about it.

So we were in the woods, Honey tracking in front of us, smelling everything and very attentive. We were silent for a long time, tracking something he had detected but I hadn’t been able to see, and Merle, even still tracking, kept looking at me and starting to say something but stopping himself. It was so unlike him that I knew something was up and feared he was going to talk about my continuing drinking. But it eventually got to my nerves and I had to ask.

“Alright, Merle, what is it?” I said as I stopped and lowered my crossbow to the ground.

He stopped too, fished a pack of Morley’s from his pocket, offered me one, lit his own and then reached with the lighter to light mine.

“Ya know I ain’t smart, right?” he started

“Why do you say that?”

“Things I just can’t wrap my head around…” he looked far into the woods as he spoke. “Like Mikki.”

Well, that I wasn’t expecting.

“Mikki?”

“Yeah… Says she’s a girl but ya can see she ain’t a girl. Know what I mean?”

“Yeah, I know what you mean. Ya can’t understand that?”

“Nope. Knew my whole life that if ya got a dick, you a man, if ya got a pussy, you a girl. That is ya wanna be the other way ‘round, you a freak.”

“Yeah, you’ve known wrong then.”

“But how?” he asked turning to me, and I could see his question was genuine. “How can Mikki say she a girl if she got a dick down there?”

“Well… I don’t know how to explain it, maybe she’d be the best one to do it. But just think it like that: you know you’re a man. Right?” he nodded the obvious answer. “And you’ve always known you a man, nobody had to tell you, you knew it since you was a little boy. Never had a question ‘bout that. And you know that, like, _inside_ , you don’t have to look down and see a dick to know you’re a man. Right?” he nodded again. “But now imagine being this sure ‘bout it, but looking in the mirror and seeing the body of a woman. But in your head you know you’re a man, but what you were born with is different from what you know, from what you’ve always known your whole life.”

He shook his head, confused, “Nah, can’t see that happening.”

“You can’t see, but tons of other people can. Don’t matter if _you_ don’t see, Merle. Mikki is a girl and she knows she’s a girl since forever, but something went different and she was born with a boy’s body. It’s wrong for her, her body don’t match her head, her soul, ya know what I mean? She is a girl, no matter what the register said when she was born, no matter that they yelled ‘ _it’s a boy_!” when she was born. It being there make no difference. You’d still feel like a man if you, god forbid, lost yours, wouldn’t’ you?”

“Don’t even say somethin’ like that!”

“You know what I mean, Merle. A dick or a pussy don’t make a person a man or a woman. It’s all in the head.”

“But… It’s _there_ , ain’t it?”

“Yep. I don’t know, it’s probably there, I don’t think she had it removed before the apocalypse. I’ll never ask either, it’s too intimate,” he said nothing, was just thoughtful smoking his cigarette. “Merle?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you like her?”

He threw the cigarette to the ground and turned to walk, “I ain’t no faggot.”

“Merle, stop,” he did and turned to me again. “You ain’t, I know that. She’s a girl. You’re just a man who likes a girl.”

He turned to walk again, saying nothing, thoughtful.

“Does she know? Something’s happening between you two?”

“Think she does. Think she likes me too.”

“Then it’s a good thing, Merle,” I said smiling I was happy for him. Merle was overcoming a lot from his past. His prejudices, his racism, his homophobia. He was changing for the better, had already all those months, but now it was more. He liked someone and this was huge for a man like Merle. “Just don’t go breaking her heart, alright?”

* * *

I made a mistake.

I should have never kept on drinking in the first place, but that goes without saying. It was obvious that I should have stopped it again, I’d done it once, I could do it again. I could and I should. And every day, even as I drank, I knew it was bad for me. I knew my thoughts got fuzzy and way too negative under the effect. My dreams were terrible nightmares of everyone in the Village turned, Merle, Michonne, Andrea, all trying to eat me. Daryl, Carol, Glenn, Lori, all dead and invading the Village and the constant cry of a baby in the background, and I looked for him as I tried to escape the dead and couldn’t find him. I’d wake up heavy-hearted, which made me want to drink more, which made the dreams even worse, and the thoughts in my head even when I was sober were dark and hopeless. So drinking was bad for me, for my mind, for my body, bad for everyone and everything, but I just kept on.

But that day, my mistake was to bring the booze I’d gathered into the Village. I brought it home, hidden among my personal stuff, and I drank at a night I wouldn’t be on the watch.

And I obviously lost control.

My house was still isolated from the others. I had moved from the one I’d given birth in, and chosen an even farther one. It was nearly on the back of the Village, still near the lake as the other one had been. It was a nice area, trees all around, birds, the water. The kind of place I had always wanted for me before it all happened, and now I had it. But the fact that it was away from the others’ made me too comfortable and I got drunk in there, sure nobody would notice.

But they did. Michonne came first to check on me because I apparently had turned on some loud music, and there was nothing wrong with listening to some music in the Village as long as it wasn’t loud enough it could be heard outside the walls. If it could be heard outside, walkers would come, people could come.

It was a huge mistake. I put them all in danger, our home, our Village, the safety of my people.

But somehow, I think it had to happen. I needed Michonne to find me drunk at the house. I needed her to call Andrea and Merle. I needed them to see me like this, I needed their help. I needed help and I didn’t even know it.

It just had to happen.

They cleared my house of any alcohol, put me under a cold shower, told me off, and kept careful watch over me for the next few weeks. I wasn’t allowed to go outside alone anymore and I hated it in the beginning. I craved a drink and couldn’t have it. I fought with them, told them to leave me alone, said they had nothing to do with it, that they had no right controlling me like this.

But they saved me.

Merle understood well. He’d been through it in the few months after the hand incident in Atlanta. He’d gone through withdrawal from alcohol and drugs and he knew how I felt. He was not a patient care provider, though. He was more of a tough-love kind of guy. Andrea was sweeter, but Michonne… She’d been disappointed.

And that’s what hurt the most. My very best friend got disappointed at me and this hit me hard. This is what made me, after the first few terrible days, understand what I’d done and understand the need of what they were doing for me. I talked to her, apologized, made promises all over again. But she knew promises meant nothing, I’d broken them before.

Over a week into it, Merle came to my place. I’d been pacing, making even Honey distressed. I asked him to leave me alone because I was not a good company then, I was aching for a drink, but he didn’t leave, shaking a bit, heart pounding. Instead, he sat on my couch, took something from his pocket, and lit it.

A joint.

“What the fuck are you doing?!”

“Lightin’ up a joint, what ya think?”

“Have you been smoking?”

“Found this stash a few days ago. Little country home with a dead plantation in the back. Lots of it, years’ worth if we don’t let’em dry.”

“Merle… What?”

“What?” he looked up at me. “You saying you’re against it? Can have all the booze and be addicted to it, not function right without alcohol, but weed is bad? Weed’s what will do ya harm?”

I had no answer. It had been years since I had a joint, but I knew it was never as bad as alcohol. Or any other drug, for that matter. I’d liked it once, but never even got addicted to it. Drinks and other drugs, yeah. They were the ones that nearly destroyed my life, but nothing bad had ever happened after smoking a joint.

“Ya an addict, Sam,” he told me in all seriousness. “Ya can’t go anywhere to get treated. Ya can’t make therapy. Can’t go to a meeting every time ya need some. Ya hear me out, if ya smoke a joint now, ya gonna relax. This think ya feeling now? Will get numbed and will go away with time.”

“Ain’t that just exchanging a drug for another?” I still rebated even as I sat down on the couch by his side.

“Ya damn right it is. But at least it won’t do you too much harm. Ya gonna smoke one at night after a long day, relax, laugh, eat a lot and fall asleep. If ya gotta have somethin’ because you’re too damn used to have some substance in your system, at least won’t be much of a bad one.”

Did it make sense or was it just my addicted mind wanting to believe it?

Merle took a long drag of it, holding it in for a moment and then started couching like crazy. I had to laugh. What a pro!

“Fuck you, it’s been a while!” he said when he could and saw me laugh at him.

“Are you sure about this, Merle?”

“Ya do what ya want. I ain’t saying it’s the best solution, is just the least worse, is all.”

“I can’t do this… Michonne –”

“Is the one who suggested it in the first place when we found it. She ain’t no dimwit, Darlin’. She knows this ain’t as bad for you or anybody as alcohol.”

And then he handed it to me. I hesitated for a moment, but I knew he was right. Weed had been smoked since the beginning of humanity’s ability to plant stuff, thousands of years. The prohibition of it was recent, but not it’s usage. If this made me stop craving for a drink, it would help me get clean. I mean, as clean as someone is when smoking weed.

So I took it. Probably not the best solution, but it was a solution.

It turned out that, that night, I didn’t crave a drink anymore. At least that night, I calmed down, wasn’t shaking anymore, and my thoughts got lighter. No negativity about never seeing Daryl again. No pain for Jack’s loss. Just good memories, just Daryl’s voice calming me down, just Jack’s cute little hand clutching my finger. Just the good parts of the little while I’d had with him. And when I fell asleep – after Merle and I drowned in a family-size pack of Cheetos – I didn’t have a nightmare. No dreams at all, just slept long and deep and woke up still feeling sleepy, but simply _fine_.

And I hadn’t felt fine in a very, _very_ long time.

* * *

Merle and I were hunting. I had finally been able to pick up an animal trail myself and we were following it. I wasn’t sure what it was and Merle refused to tell me, because he obviously knew what it was. Honey was with us, silent on her paws, sniffing and attentive to all around us all. I had had a lot of success in training her. She’d come to me and be silent at a short whistle, sit by my side and stay put at a hand gesture, look for threats at a low, long whistle and relax and be free to play around at a click of my tongue.

And it was she who warned us someone was around. She froze by my side, eyes fixed somewhere high up a tree, completely still, just one short low growl to get my attention. Looking up, our weapons ready without even knowing why, Merle and I saw the ruins of a hunting platform. We couldn’t see anyone, but Honey knew for sure there was someone. My crossbow pointed up, Merle with a loaded pistol, we exchanged a look. We couldn’t keep walking and pass under the tree to the risk of getting attacked.

“We know you’re up there!”, I said and my voice echoed in the woods. “We mean no harm, just passing my, hunting some food. Will you show yourself?”

There was silence. Whoever was up there had surely heard me, but was keeping hidden. This could either mean it was someone really scared of people who just wanted us to go away, or a threat, someone who’d attack and try to rob and kill us.

“We just want to pass by knowing you won’t attack us, alright?” I kept on. “Come on, show yourself.”

It took a few more seconds, long ones, but they did. A boy who looked barely eighteen poked his head out of the platform, a rifle in hand pointing down at us, looking repeatedly to Merle and I.

“Good, thank you,” I told him. “You alone up there?”

“Yes!” he answered really fast and I knew it was probably a lie. “I don’t have stuff, so please just leave us alone!”

See? He wasn’t alone.

“Us?”

“Me! Leave me alone!”

“Hey, it’s alright. We don’t wanna rob you. I told you, we’re just hunting out here.”

“Go on, then!”

“And how do we know you ain’t shooting and robbing us? Not taking the chance, kid.”

“You say ya don’t got stuff?” Merle said by my side. “Mean ya hungry?”

Oh, so proud of Merle! The old Merle I knew from before would never ask anyone that. He just wouldn’t care, but this Merle did.

“Why you ask?”

“If you’re hungry we can get you something,” I told him. “But we won’t if you don’t put your gun down.”

“Why would you help us? Nobody helps anymore these days!”

“Not nobody, kid,” I told him, my arms hurting a bit from pointing the crossbow up and steady. “We been hungry. Been there, alright?”

“Why should we trust you?”

Merle was the one to answer “Alright, I can see you gone through some shit, kid. You’re right in not trustin’ people, good thing these days. But we both down here got ya on our aims and ya not even hiding right, coulda shot ya between the eyes three times by now. What’s that tell ya?”

He hesitated and didn’t lower his rifle. Quietly, I told Merle to keep his own pointed at him and lowered my weapon. The kid’s attention picked up at that, as I rested my crossbow to the ground, removed my backpack and crouched down to open it. I had water and a packed lunch I’d brought from home, some real cooked food. I got up and help it on his sight.

“We’re offering you food, real food. Now, please, lower your weapon for once and come down or you won’t have it, simple like that.”

He wanted to believe us but hesitated and I admired him for that. It was good not to trust people easily these days and I knew it quite well. After a moment he did lower his rifle and by my side, Merle visibly relaxed. I patted honey’s head to calm her down a little but didn’t tell her it was fine to relax. He disappeared from our sight for a moment and then we saw him start to climb down the stairs, and he really wasn’t alone. There was a girl with him, just a child who kept hidden behind him all the time.

These were David and Emma, brother and sister who’d been on the road with their two uncles after their mother died on the first few days of the outbreak. They had been robbed of everything weeks before and, when the men tried to react, they were killed. David and Emma had to watch all of it when they hid on top of a tree, or they’d have been doomed as well. Emma didn’t say a word, too scared to speak even as Merle and I led them both back to the Village with us.

Our family was slowly growing.


	41. Day 310, part 1

Michonne hadn’t been there when we returned that night with the young ones. They were scared and awed at the same time, and everyone at the Village received them really well. Miranda checked their wounds and scratches, they showered, had dinner and slept with the Morales’ for the first night. In the end, when they fell asleep from exhaustion, they were both more relaxed and Emma had even spoken a little. It was going to be good for them to have a real place and people around.

Michonne hadn’t come back on the next day either, and the day was passing and she wasn’t returning. Over 24 hours gone made us all worried. At that point, we had already found working radios that could cover a good range for communication, but she wasn’t answering on the channel we all were in. She was probably just out of range, traveled a bit farther, but as the hours passed I got more and more anxious about it, my wrist aching and my heart tight. I always preferred when someone went on runs with her, being alone was not good.

I decided not to allow it anymore. Nobody was to go out alone, at all, ever, that was final.

But for now, she was out there, the radio was silent, and time was passing.

I sent Merle out to look for her instead of going myself because there was work to be done at the Village, and I trusted Merle’s tracking and fighting skills. If someone could find and bring Michonne back, it was Merle. So he left and I stayed working with Morales on the wall – I was learning well how to set the bricks with cement – and I got David working with us as Miranda worked on comforting Emma – poor thing, she was jumpy and anxious all the time, even after a good night of sleep. Miranda and Emma were cleaning a house together where the girl and her brother would live. Honey liked her and I thought maybe she could be a good company for her. As I worked, my mind was constantly out there, with Michonne and Merle. We had Mikki in the platform, Andrea rounding, and it was all alright.

But my mind was out there with my friends, picturing every little thing that could have gone wrong, every horrible way they could have been hurt, every terrible person they could have found on their way. And if I kept on with it I would go insane.

I needed to do something. Everything in the Village was fine as I walked along Circle Street and turned the corner to Main Street. I saw Mikki coming out of her house to cross the street towards the office. Her hair had changed since I knew her, looking more blonde now, contrasting prettily with her tanned skin. So I jogged to meet her before she could enter the house.

“Mikki!” I called her and she stopped to look at me and smiled. “Odd question! Could you help me with my hair?”

“Oh, honey,” she said tenderly and reached for my head. “What hair?”

I laughed, “It ain’t that short anymore! It’s what, two inches now?”

“If that. What do you wanna do –” and she stopped abruptly, widened her eyes and was suddenly really excited. “Oh, I know what we can do!!”

She grabbed my hand and pulled me to the next house, Merle’s. She entered with no ceremony like she knew the place well. That got me thinking, but I didn’t ask. She dragged me straight to the bathroom – exactly where I had shaved my head the first time – and found the machine inside a drawer.

“You’re shaving me again?” I asked her

“Yes! Not all, though. Just trust me, you’ll look great!”

Eager, she dragged me away again, now to her house. Ma was napping on the couch, so we crossed the house silently and entered the bathroom. This house was larger than mine, more spacious, as we both fit well in the small space. So Mikki looked, and looked, and measured, and drew lines with the handle of a comb, and then started shaving the sides, leaving the top and back of my hair untouched.

And she was right; after she styled the longer part to stand up with hair gel, I did look awesome.

It was still the middle of the afternoon, tough, so I tackled the deep cleaning of my house that I’d been intending to do for a few days already. I had some detergent and bleach and they did a great job. I hand washed all the bedsheets, swept and mopped the floors, cleaned the inside of the fridge – thank the gods for the solar power we’d been able to get running. My fridge was small and didn’t spend a lot, so I still had enough energy for one warm shower a day and to have lights on at night. I washed the sink and kitchen floor with bleach, took the couch and mattress outside to take some sun, cleaned every surface of the house.

I was sweaty and stinky but I still decided to do a little makeover on the outside of the house. I walked around the Village looking at the other houses and chose a few path stones there were in front of one of them. They were large and heavy, so I took the car there and loaded them on the back, one by one, and drove then back to my place to lay them, making a path to connect the sidewalk to the porch steps. Then I swept it all from any dirt and ended up sweeping the sidewalk too. One thing led to another and I ended up with a can of white paint that Morales had stocked and painted the rails of my porch.

I did it all to keep my mind busy and it worked damn well because it was dark already when I stopped, deciding to give the paint a second-hand tomorrow. I went to the sidewalk and looked over the house, the light on the porch on, couch and mattress back in. It was a nice house, really small with just a living room joined with a dining room, a small kitchen, bathroom, and one bedroom. It was enough and more than that, it was awesome. It was mine, the first time in my life that I had a house that was nobody else’s, and that was _home_.

I just needed Daryl there with me now. We could be happy in this house.

The radio on the back of my waist came to life then, startling me but in a really good way.

“Sam, you’re there?”

I nearly dropped it in the hurry to answer, “Michonne?! You okay?”

“I’m fine!” her voice told me.

Fuck, that was a relief!

“Is Merle there?”

“Yes, he found me,” and before I could ask what had happened and whey they’d be coming home, Merle’s voice came over Michonne’s. I could see him grabbing the radio from her hands unceremoniously.

“How ya doing, Sammy girl?”

I laughed. Shit, thank God!

“Don’t call me Sammy!” I answered exactly what Merle was expecting to hear. “Where are you? You coming home?”

I waited for an answer but the radio was silent for a while. Too long.

“Michonne?”

A few more seconds passed before she answered. Shit, don’t do that to a person!

“We’ll be back at first light tomorrow. Too dark already.”

Right. No wandering around at night, I had decided that. Nobody was to be out of the Village at night even if they had to sleep somewhere else to only be out of any safe place during the day. I wanted them back home, but I’d made the rule for a reason.

“Are you safe? Gonna be safe until morning?”

“We’re safe, don’t worry.”

“Good. Good, okay. Thank you for reaching out, I was worried sick here.”

“I know you were,” she told me and I could hear she had a smile at that. “How are things there?”

“All in order. Found two kids in the woods and brought them home yesterday. I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow. Please, no delays in the morning, okay?”

“You got it. We’ll see you soon. Good night!”

“Night,” and I added knowing Merle was by her. “Night, asshole!”

There was no answer but I could hear Merle’s laugh in my head. I laughed shaking my head, relief flooding me. They were fine.

I made one more round in the Village, spoke to everyone, checked again on the night's shifts and went back home. I tried turning on the little stereo that had been in the house but apparently, the battered had finally died and it didn’t work. I remembered there were other ones on the stock house but I didn’t bother going there to get them now. I just took off my boots, sat on the couch, closing my eyes and breathing out, and then lit up a joint and smoked a little of it. Only two or three lungful’s, just to relax. I couldn’t smoke too much today because I had to be up in the middle of the night for my round shift. Already light on my feet, I moved to the kitchen, prepared myself some dinner – I had leftovers from yesterday’s canned meatballs – and after eating I took a quick, hot shower and went to bed.

I didn’t know, when I woke up just a few hours later, that my life was about to take a whole turn once again.

* * *

Merle wasn’t there but his schedule was followed normally. In the last three hours of the night, Mikki was on the gate platform keeping guard and I was in my post, circling the inner walls of the Village, Honey loyally following my every step. It was a calm night like all and the day was starting to show its face, the sky palling gradually and all the birds around starting to sing.

I was up on a tree on the back of the Village looking out to the woods over the hedge with binoculars. All quiet, nothing more than one walker with a long white dress wandering blindly far from there. Damn, that was a bride…

Mikki’s voice on the radio cut the silence, “Sam, do you hear me?”

I took it from my waistband, letting the binoculars hang, “Clearly, what’s up?”

“I see cars coming down the road towards us, bit slow.”

“Pro’ly Merle and Michonne coming back,” I told her.

“Nope,” she said with certainty. “Not their cars.”

“I’m on my way.”

I let myself fall from the branch to the ground and made my way, walking fast nearly in a sprint around the lake towards Main Street. Just as I entered it, the radio came alive once again.

“Sam, quick, they’ve stopped!”

I started running, Honey did too, keeping up with me, “You’re armed, right?”

“I am, but they –”

She stopped abruptly.

“Mikki?”

Instead of her voice on the radio, I got Merle’s from somewhere out there, “What’s goin’ on over there?”

“Gonna know in a minute!” I told him and was already halfway up Main Street and now I could see Mikki up the platform, and she seemed fine. Not less worried, I saw David under it, looking up, his rifle already in hand. I heard steps behind me and saw Andrea and Morales, also armed, running up the street, and as I ran past Will and Mikki’s house, Will was coming out as well. I just stopped on the bottom of the platform to cock and arm my crossbow and having it ready before joining Mikki upon the platform and instantly aiming out, before I could even see who or what was out there.

I understood who it was at the same time he also recognized me.

The Governor.

He had an annoying, arrogant smile on his face, but when he saw who I was, when he fixed his eyes on me, it was gone instantly.

“ _You_ ,” he said simply.

“Right back at ya, asshole,” I had no fucking ceremonies this time. “The fuck you want?”

He started laughing, his assault rifle in hand still pointing up. His man behind him, though, had them all pointed right at Mikki and me.

“ _Lynn_ ,” the Governor said as he laughed. “Who’d tell? It’s you! I remember you. You’ve killed my men! Massacred them, I’ll give you that. I’ve been looking for you; did you know that?”

“How did you find me?”

“Oh, your little friends told me where to find you.”

 _Wait a minute_. Merle and Michonne hadn’t. I was sure they hadn’t, they’d talked to me yesterday on the radio, Merle had just talked to me. They hadn’t.

“Don’t bullshit me, Gov,” I mocked. “No friend of mine told you where to find me.”

“No? China boy and farm girl are not your friends then?” he laughed and I was frozen, the words still meaningless in my ears.

China boy and farm girl.

China boy and farm girl!

_Glenn. Maggie._

Glenn and Maggie!

“D’you have them?” I asked, my insides in turmoil but I kept my exterior firm.

“Oh, so now you do know them,” he said with a smile. “It wasn’t even that hard to get them to say it. Point a gun at the china man’s bloodied head, farm girl will tell you all.”

 _Glenn and Maggie_.

How the fuck did they lead the Governor here? I understand Maggie would tell anyone anything is Glenn’s life was a risk – and _damn, Glenn and Maggie_!! They were together and nearby; they were all nearby! – but how in the holy fuck did they know where the village was? Fuck, so many questions and the only person who could answer them was the Governor, the motherfucker.

I needed help. I needed everyone who was at home and I needed Merle and Michonne, I needed them all. So I needed time. I lowered my crossbow a little, not aiming for his head anymore, as an attempt to get them to relax a little bit.

“What have you done to them?”

“What do you think, Lynn? Wouldn’t mistreat guests, now, would I? What kind of man you take me for?”

“The kind that attacks smaller communities to take it all and tortures people for information? Am I close?”

He laughed, opening his arms, “You got me!”

I smiled at him. “Let’s talk, Gov. I ain’t willin’ to strike back like I did last time. Maybe we can work something out.”

“You wanna talk?” he stopped and pretended to be considering it.

“I got more than I did back then. More people, even more weapons. If I was trouble for you then, you don’t wanna know what I can do now.”

“You’re threatening me now?”

“Friendly warning. Let’s all put our guns down and I’ll go down there to talk, how does that sound?”

He nodded, mouth turning up and opening his arms, “Sure. Come on down, we’ll talk.”

_We’ll talk, my ass._

Nodding, I lowered the crossbow all the way and Mikki and I went down the ladder and started giving out orders immediately, my voice firm but low so they wouldn’t hear me from the other side of the wall.

Thank god the front wall had been the first one we got done. No bullets would go through it.

“Full load, everyone! Hide behind the cars and shoot the fuck outta them! This man will not talk, he’ll shoot as soon as we open the gate. Shoot to kill. They’ll not take the Village, we’ll fight for it!” and I took the radio and pressed the button, “Miranda, you got Ma and Emma?”

She answered immediately, “I got them!”

“You three stay in there no matter what until one of us go get you!”

“Got it!” she said.

“Michonne, Merle, you get your ass back here RIGHT NOW!”

“On our way already!” Merle said though it. “Fuck’s happenin’ there?”

“He found us. The Governor’s here.”

He took a second to answer and I knew he and Michonne were over there wherever the fuck they were, sharing a worried and angry look.

“Six minutes,” he informed me.

Good, that was quick enough.

I hang the crossbow on my back and took the .12 shotgun what was Will’s before, checked it was full and moved to the gate, everyone already out of sight but ready behind the cars. Looking at Mikki, who had her hands on the gate ready to slide it open, and gestured for her to open it and then to run up the platform. She nodded, her face serious and concentrated, and opened it.

With my back to the wall right on the side of the gate, I peeked out just as there was only a gap. The first shot came right then, hitting the metal of the still sliding gate, sparks flying and making me flinch back inside.

“Fuck! I thought you said we’d talk!” I yelled.

“I changed my mind!” the Governor’s voice came from somewhere outside.

Unlike in the movies when the bad guy and the good guy have a whole conversation before the big action scene, we said nothing else, neither did anyone. My people started shooting as soon as the gate was fully opened, aiming for any parts of bodies from the Governor’s people that could be seen. Mikki was already up in the platform, crouched down to hide behind the wall, shooting and hiding again. Shots came non-stop from the outside, making it hard for me to get an opportunity to look out, aim and shoot. These motherfuckers were trained, much better than we were.

Mental note to get battle training to everyone from now on. With plans and formations and all.

I needed to get out of this corner because he knew that’s where I was and bullets were grazing the corner of the wall too close to me for my likes. Before I could sprint away though, his voice came from the outside again.

“I thought you said you wanted to talk!”

“I lied!”

I took the crossbow from my back and let it fall there near the wall. As much as I loved it, I wouldn’t be much help not and the thing was heavy, I didn’t need anything holding me back. Then I ran away, not entering the line of fire by running behind and around Ma’s house – thank God she was at Miranda’s with her and Emma, no stray bullets would get to them – and returning to the street behind the cars with the others. I knelt on the asphalt and from there I had better chances of seeing and shooting them. I hit one of the men high in the chest, nearly on his neck instead of in the head as I wanted.

Update on my kills: five.

We’d have as least one walker in a few minutes, also all the noise as going to attract others from the area. This had to end as soon as possible. I heard, among all the shooting when the door of a car was strongly closed and a motor turned on. They couldn’t be withdrawing, could they?

Looking over the hood, I saw the Governor had a huge truck with some sort of metal grid fortifications on it, and he was accelerating. Caught his eyes then.

He was smiling.

“Get away from the cars!!!” I yelled at the others as loudly as I could. “Now!!”

But I only moved after the instant I saw the others heard me. Morales, Andrea, David, and Will ran seeking cover elsewhere but I had no time to see where because looking again I saw the car coming straight at the car I was behind, straight at me.

I jumped to the side of the street, falling on my chest and hands just as he hit the car. Motherfucker destroyed my Hummer but it didn’t matter now, because as I turned to look, the car had flown sideways and it went straight to the office porch. The wood column tumbled and the roof fell on top of the ruined car, the whole small house bending to the side. It was destroyed.

Safe inside the car even after a strong crash, the Governor looked out at me through the window, smiling and opening the door. Still on the ground, I reached for my shotgun that had fallen by my side, stretching a bit, but before I could even point at him and cock it, the Governor was out of the car and a golden-brown shadow was flying over me towards him.

Honey attacked as I’d never seen her do, viciously, growling and biting his arm. He was screaming, his machine gun falling to the ground, and he fought her. I turned to shoot at others who were approaching to try to help him.

Six. Seven.

I didn’t see him take a pistol from fuck knows where even as he tried to fight Honey away. I just heard the shot and a shriek whimper and Honey fell to the ground. I froze looking at her, who was trying to stand, limping and crying, and there was blood coming from somewhere on her hind.

Now I had it. That was it. Motherfucker wanted to take my Village? I’d kill him for it. But shoot _my dog_?! I’d fucking torture him!

It was like it was all happening in slow motion. Honey had fallen and I’d looked at her, and rising my shotgun again looked back at the sonofabitch as he pointed his pistol right at me, a satisfied, smug look on his face even as his other arm bled. I lowered my shotgun as I swirled around myself, raising my leg as I went, the motion giving me force to kick the motherfucker’s hand away and send his gun flying away. It hurt his hand, good, and he cradled it as I got nearer and pointed the shotgun right at his head.

“Kneel!” I yelled and he rose his hands. The shooting around us was lessened but not gone, so his men were still around. The Governor was bending his knees a little, looking a bit scared at me but not kneeling as I ordered.

And then his creepy, annoying little smile returned and felt a barrel of a gun press on the back of my head.

“You kneel,” a male voice said from behind me.

My wrist burned like hell as I held the shotgun, finger on the trigger. “I got a shotgun on your boss forehead, you sure this is a good idea?”

“Drop it!” the man yelled as he pressed it strongly against my head. It was still a bit hot from his probable shooting with it before, and it pushed me a little forward.

Fuck. _Fuck, fuck_.

Where the fuck were the others? There was still shooting going on, so I don’t think any of them could come to my rescue, and there the hell was Merle and Michonne? It’d been over six minutes hadn’t it?! But was that a car noise? I couldn’t look, but I knew someone was coming. They were here, they’d help.

I’d had to lower the gun but I didn’t want to. But the hot barrel on the back of my head made sure I did. I lowered it and –

And then so many things happened at the same time it got all a mess in my mind. The car I’d head came to cross the gate and ran over one of the governor’s men, who flew somewhere out of my sight. I felt the gun on my head move and the man holding it got startled, but it never left. I looked to my side to see it and they were coming out of the car, Merle, Michonne, Rick, Daryl, all guns pointed at us, including the crossbow and –

_What?_

I saw nothing, all the sounds around me deafened by my pounding heart and ringing ears and I looked, just stared; everything around me in slow motion again. Daryl was coming on our direction, crossbow pointed and long steps and his eyes found mine.

He was here.

Daryl was here.

My eyes widened and I started, but only just started, to come back to myself and the reality around me. There was a gun pointed to my head but I couldn’t simply _not_ look at Daryl, because this was Daryl and he was here.

It had all happened in probably two seconds. I was being grabbed forcefully, turned to face the others, to face Daryl with the Governor behind me, the gun now in his hand, pointing it at my temple, his arm around my neck. I hadn’t seen it happening. I got distracted, obviously because Daryl was here, how could I not? I raised my hands to hold the Governor’s arm, trying to pull it away from my neck because the feeling of a man around my neck _again_ got to my nerves instantly, but my eyes were still on Daryl, as though if I stared enough I would understand what was happening and what he was doing here.

“ _Merle?”_ the Governor asked from behind me and then laughed aloud.

It was only then that I looked around, my eyes leaving Daryl’s to see Rick right there, his Python pointed right at me – of course not at me, but the man had his head hidden well right behind mine – and then Merle, his eyes worried looking at us and Michonne coming a little behind, limping.

Oh, these guys had lots to tell me! I’d want details!

But first I had to get rid of this motherfucker. The other man was by our side and I felt movement behind us, which meant other of Woodbury’s men were there, and then my people we closing in behind the others, behind Daryl.

So it was me between the two groups. Nobody wanted to do anything not to risk him shooting me in the head right in front of them. _Oh, no, he wouldn’t_. Daryl was right here, _finally_ , after so long he was here in my sight, and I would not just motherfucking die now.

I hadn’t said a word yet and I wouldn’t because if I said anything it would end up being Daryl’s name and now was not the moment.

“Drop it!” Daryl said and I couldn’t believe I was hearing his voice again. It was loud and firm and filled with anger. _Oh my Daryl._

I had to think and act fast but any defense movement I knew would point the gun right at the people in front of me even for a millisecond and he could pull the trigger and end up hitting someone. I couldn’t take the risk.

It felt like it’d been all happening for minutes but it was seconds. The Governor was speaking, threatening but I didn’t register the words because I started panicking a bit when he started walking back, towards the car he’d used to enter the Village. He was going to take me away.

Everyone reacted at that, yelling at him to stop, at his man to drop, but nobody felt safe enough to shoot or he’d shoot me, I knew that’s what they were all feeling.

“Shoot’em!” the Governor yelled from behind my head and at that, chaos spread. I barely saw it, everyone was shooting and looking for cover but I didn’t watch long enough. I squatted a little as I removed one hand from his arm around my neck and raised it strongly above our heads, pushing his armed hand up and away from my head. I failed in grabbing hold of his wrist, though, and that was a mistake. As I grabbed his arm around my neck with my other hand, I tried shoving him backward with my hips and pulling his forward so he’d roll over me and fall on the ground, but his free hand came down on my head, the butt of the gun hitting me straight in the nose.

I hear the crunchy noise and went blind to everything, my eyes watering instantly and I screamed a round of curses because that hurt like a motherfucker, and then I was being dragged into the car. I kicked and punched and spat all I could but now I was mostly useless. He was again on my back, the worst bear hug I’d ever experienced, and then I was inside with him and two other men were entering even as the bullets flew freely outside, people yelling and cursing. He pressed the gun to my temple again to make me stop fighting and then the car was backing off, bullets grazing it and the thing was probably armored because none came through, not even the windows.

We were outside already and people were running, I was able to look through the back window and I saw, and it broke my heart and filled the little pieces with rage, that Daryl was out, looking at the car sped away on the road, and he ran after us for a while before stopping and running back to the Village.

This was not over. They were all gonna go after me. Daryl was gonna get me.

So I relaxed and stopped struggling against the Governor’s chest, and he let go of me, pushing me away to press my back against the back door, and he faced me.

And he saw me smiling.

“Do you think you have reasons to be smiling about, Lynn?” he asked me, the gun pointed at my chest.

I licked the blood that was rolling down my nose to my lips. “Yeah, I actually do. It’s ‘cause you got no idea. No fuckin’ idea, Gov.”

“No idea of what?” he asked as he breathed hard through his teeth.

“That you’re fuckin’ with the wrong people.”


	42. Day 309

I wasn’t there, but I was told.

That day, Michonne had planned on going to the prison to take another look and come up with a plan. Valuable stuff could be in there, and this far into the outbreak probably nobody alive would be inside. She could deal with the dead.

She didn’t make it there, though. Michonne found people in the woods, armed man who came up with a conversation about there being a place she could go to, that she didn’t have to stay outside alone anymore – of course, because she said nothing about her having a whole, blooming community. But it was only when they said their place was called Woodbury that she knew who they were, and that made her even quieter. Outnumbered, Michonne knew she couldn’t say no. She knew what they were capable of, what their orders were. So she went with them, pretending to think it was a good idea and a blessing to have found good people with a real community she could go to.

So Michonne went to the Governor’s place. The Governor, the son of a bitch who’d attacked us as made us move away from our original home. Merle’s previous leader, the man who attacked smaller communities for supplies and fuck knows what else.

It was an incredible place, she told me. A whole town, clean streets, lamp posts, lots of people, maybe nearly a hundred of them, lots of guards, ammo, food, hot water. It was utopic, even. Of course, it was easy for them when they took everything from others to have it all. She was shown around, introduced to the Governor, who had no idea who she was because he hadn’t seen her back then and none of the men who’d seen her were still alive to tell.

The governor said stuff about her looking strong and capable with her sword, that they could use people like her, that he wanted her to stay and work with them, a lot of bullshit that she kept pretending to believe, all the while observing every little detail she could, trying to find ways to escape and to send word to the Village informing where she was. She tried the radio at a moment she got alone, it had thankfully been hidden under her clothes so nobody saw it, but we were out of range.

After hours, she told him thanks but no thanks, I prefer to be out there, I’m a free spirit, I like the woods, whatever bullshit she could come up with to convince him to let her go.

And he… Did. He let her go.

She knew something was wrong when he insisted very little and had an annoying smile on his face, but she wouldn’t take her chances to investigate his intentions any further. All Michonne wanted was to get the fuck out of there, make sure nobody followed, and go back home.

She was followed.

The governor sent four men after her, she counted as she hid in the woods. I mean, the man finds a woman in the woods, takes her somewhere, offers that she stays and when she says no thanks, they try to fucking kill her! What kind of a sick motherfucker does that?

They were out there to kill her and my chest tightened just to think of it when she told me. Four armed men against one woman with a sword. But Michonne… Man, that was Michonne, so they had no fucking idea what they were up against. The woman was fierce and when she was angry she got even more dangerous. And they pissed her for real. Three of them were dead already, heads rolling away from their bodies when they hadn’t even seen her approach, among the walkers that had come to their noise in the woods. She’d had to kill them as well and got covered in guts in the process when the last one of the men shot her in the leg. It was a graze on the back of her thigh, but it was enough to slow her down from limping and pain.

She found a parking lot of a grocery store on the side of a road but had no time to try to find a place to hide because there was a car approaching, so she just hid anyway she could behind an abandoned van. From the red, decrepit car, a woman came out with a gun, followed closely by the driver. They both looked thin but clean and healthy, and they both did a quick swipe around.

“Clear outside,” the woman announced and they seemed to relax. Well, it wasn’t clear because Michonne was there watching them through the dirty windows of the car, so they really, really should have been more careful. But they weren’t, seeming too confident as people who probably had been doing this for a long time now.

“Alright, let’s take a look,” the man said but the woman approached him and they kissed, smiling and sweetly, speaking tenderly to each other. Then, when the man broke open the door and walked in, the woman stayed outside.

“Glenn? Get that duck!” she told him.

“What?” he asked from the inside.

“Get that duck!”

“Are you serious?”

“A kid growing up in a prison could use some toys.”

Michonne had a start at this whole dialogue. _Glenn?_ She’d heard that name somewhere, it rang a bell but she couldn’t remember clearly then, because she was scared, hurt, tired, and she didn’t connect the name to my stories. She didn’t know then that it was _Glenn_.

Second thing was the mention of the prison. The prison she planned to go to before she was found by the Governor’s men. _A kid growing up in a prison_. These two people had a group and they were living in the prison and there was a child there.

And the Governor’s men were around. She needed to warn them. They seemed to be good people, and people who are out there caring about children should not be found by the Governor.

“We just hit the powdered formula jackpot!” the man said minutes later when he left the store.

“Thank God!” the woman commented.

“I also got beans, batteries, cocktail wieners, many mustards! It’s a straight shot back to home from here. We’ll probably make it in time for dinner.”

“I like the quiet. Back there, back home, you can always hear them outside the fence no matter where you are.”

Michonne knew they had to just shut the fuck up about _home_ and the prison because there were Governor’s men around and _goddammit_ you don’t just talk aloud about your place in the open like that! Didn’t people know anything?!

She was going to warn them, decidedly. But before she could get up with difficulty from her crouched position, the last standing man that had been sent to kill her in the woods arrived, gun pointed at the woman, asking where was it that they were calling _home_. It was a whole, quick mess after that, the couple pointing their guns, the man shooting to distract them and grabbing the woman, making her hostage. It was like two minutes and they were in the car, leaving, the sonofabitch who was trying to kill Michonne talking the couple to Woodbury.

All Michonne could think not was _shit, shit, shit_. And she wasn’t even one to curse too much. So these two were good people who lived in the prison and there was a group and a child, a baby, because they were taking cans of formula there. And now the cans were abandoned there and there was a baby that needed it. The decision was made even before she could stop and consider it. Limping, she took the basket and made her way to the prison, which she knew exactly where it was. She had to bring the baby the formula and let their group know what had happened. She’d be damned if she let the Governor destroy yet another community.

And I wasn’t there, but I was told.

Michonne limped her way to the prison carrying the basket with the formula. She was scared, she tells me. She knew nothing good would happen to those two at Woodbury, she was hurt, hungry and thirsty, feeling faint from losing blood and the goddamn heat, and worried about going back home and about helping the baby, whoever this baby was.

She limped among the walkers who didn’t detect her with the blood and guts and marched straight to the diamond-shaped fence of the prison. Someone saw her from afar and made his way to her, reaching the inner fence just as she reached the outer.

Michonne says she remembers thinking _damn_ when she saw him but didn’t linger in the thought.

He stared at her, utterly confused, and she grabbed the fence with her hand, looking straight at him as to convince him she was a living person, yes, he was seeing it right. Before he could act on anything, though, the walkers around finally recognized her as living and she had to drop her bag and the basket, take the katana out and fight them.

“Should we help her?” She heard someone else from the inside of the fence but paid no mind. She was weak and fainting and fell to the grass amidst the hungry dead.

She was inside when she came to herself again, lying on top of a blanket on the floor with people standing above her and the men from the fence way too close.

“Who are you?” he asked her. In reflex, she tried to reach for her katana, scared and confused, and he kept it away from her. “No! We’re not gonna hurt you unless you do something stupid first, aright?”

“Rick?” somebody said as he entered the room. “Who the hell is this?”

She tried sitting up.

“You wanna tell us your name?”

She was shocked wordless.

“You wanna tell us your name?” he repeated, annoyed.

_Rick._

_Glenn._

A redneck with a sleeveless shirt.

She’d found _them_.

She says she was considering just blabbing out “Shit I found you all!” or simply yelling “Sam’s alive!” but Rick was too suspicious of her already, and how the hell do you break a piece of news like this to people who thought their former leader was dead?

“Ya’ll come on in here,” the man that she knew to be Daryl, nobody had to say his name for her to know, told Rick.

“Everything alright?” Rick asked without taking his eyes off Michonne.

“You gonna wanna see this.”

Rick then gave orders for the others around to go in and for the boy – Carl, who Michonne knew the story about the shooting and all, to take the basket with the formula. They all obeyed with no questions, but the boy made a point in taking Michonne’s backpack with him as well. The radio was in there.

“We’ll keep this safe and sound,” Rick said showing her the katana in his hands. The doors are all locked. You’re safe here. And we can treat _that_.”

“I didn’t ask for your help,” was all her surprised, still weak mind could make her say.

“It doesn’t matter,” Rick turned and walked away. “We can’t let you leave.”

So then went into a large corridor and Daryl – _Daryl!_ – locked the door behind them.

And I was there, at the Village, getting a freaking haircut and then deep cleaning my house when Michonne was in the same room with _Daryl_!

She sat up, her back against the bars of a jail cell, trying to breathe normally, get her wits back, and she even laughed a little. She knew how happy I’d be; she knew how much this encounter would change everything in our lives. But then, with a start, she knew my friends were taken to Woodbury, to the Governor, and that they were in serious trouble. The Governor would do anything to find out where their community was.

Getting up with difficulty, she limped her way to the locked door and saw the group in there. There were around a woman who was crying and the baby she’d brought the formula to. She remembered my stories about me not being the only pregnant woman. The baby was there, born and alive.

Minutes later they returned and came on strongly asking questions. They did not seem amicable to her even though she’d just brought the baby stuff, keeping it from going hungry tonight, and yet they were not friendly at all.

“We can tend to that wound for you,” Rick came saying, “give you a little food and water and then send you on your way. But you’re gonna have to tell us how you found us and why you were carrying the formula.”

“I’ve always known where this prison is,” she explained and she got up from her spot, “but even if I didn’t, the man who dropped the basket, the Asian boy with the pretty girl, they spoke of it aloud for anyone to hear. You might wanna tell your people to be more careful.”

“Hold up a moment now,” Rick said not allowing her to move on. “He dropped the basket? What happened?”

“Were they attacked?” the senior without a leg asked, his voice deep but trembling a little with worry.

“They were taken.”

“Taken? By who?”

“By the same sonofabitch who shot me. And destroyed my community before.”

“Hey, these are our people! You tell me what happened!”

At that, Rick pressed his hand to her bullet would, violent and angry and she felt less and less like telling them about me. She was considering just leaving and going home to tell me, and I’d decide what to do. Why would she give these people good news if they were locking her in and pressing fingers to her wounds?

She defended herself, pushing him away and pointing a finger at his face, “Don’t you ever touch me again!”

And then Daryl had the crossbow pointed at her, “You’d better start talking or you gonna have a bigger problem than a gunshot wound!”

She stared at him over the bow. She couldn’t even believe she was in front of the man she’d heard so much about, Merle’s brother, for fuck’s sakes, but was under his arrow’s aim. Michonne was never one to be too sweet to unknown people or too patient, and she was at the end of hers already.

“Find them yourself!” she told Daryl and Rick made him lower the crossbow.

“You came where for a reason,” Rick told her, making her stop for a moment to remember the reasons. They had almost slipped her mind. It was to bring the baby the formula and to help people who seemed to be good to be rescued from the Governor’s hands. So she breathed in and told them about Woodbury and the man himself.

“And where the hell is this place?” Rick asked after she explained.

“South. I’ll show you.”

“And how do I know you’re not bullshitting us? That you’re not leading us to a trap?”

“You don’t,” she told him simply.

“I’ll tell you what, then. You’ll point us in the direction and we’ll go check if this place is real. You’ll stay here. In there,” Rick pointed to the outer cell. “If we see it’s real, I’ll believe you and then we’ll go get out friends back.”

“You’re locking me up,” she affirmed angrily. “After I came all the way here to help?”

“Anyone can say they’re trying to help and then fuck us up. This is how this is gonna be and end of discussion.”

* * *

I’d told Merle that Michonne had intended to go to the prison that day, so it was easy for him to find it. From afar, he saw it wasn’t overtaken by walkers anymore and that there were people in there, living, the only walkers were outside at the fence, aimlessly trying to reach someone. He knew if Michonne had come here and found people, and was missing for over a whole day, the chances that she was in there were huge.

He observed for a long time, the knife attached to the hand and a pistol on his waistband, holding up the binoculars to try and understand the place and the people in there before deciding on what to do. It didn’t take long for the answers to become clear.

Merle started laughing, not believing his eyes because it was just _not fucking possible_ that he was seeing his baby brother come out of the building and start packing a car with stuff with other people, one of them the young kid Merle remembered from the quarry camp.

 _It was Daryl_. He’d found his brother.

Fighting not to let the emotion of it came out, because this was _Merle_ , he was a changed man but he didn’t do _feelings_ , Merle walked his way in the open to the fence of the prison, without knowing he was repeating exactly what Michonne had done just a while ago. The people inside stopped to look at the foreign movement for the second time that day, and Merle could see the moment Daryl recognized him. He extended a hand to make another man Merle didn’t know lower his weapon and started walking in his direction.

Merle was laughing aloud as he stabbed walker after walker in the brain on his way there and reached the gate just as Daryl did too.

“Hey there, little brother!”

Daryl was shocked, eye wide looking at a man he thought he’d never see again. A man, in all honesty, he had gotten well used not to have around.

“ _Merle_?” he asked

“As I live and breathe!” Merle laughed aloud. “Knew I’d find ya one day or another!

“How?”

“How I found ya?” Merle looked around at the walkers approaching. “Ya really wanna discuss that _right now_?”

Daryl looked back to exchange a look with Rick, who was standing there a little behind, hearing it all, seeming just as shocked and, with reason, worried. Daryl didn’t wait for authorization though, he unlocked the gate, allowed Merle to step in and locked it back again.

And was surprised out of his shit by a tight hug given by his big brother. Perhaps the first one in their entire life.

“Fuckin’ shit, baby brother, it’s good to see you!”

Not knowing what to do and way too stunned, Daryl hugged him back, patting his back. When Merle let go, Daryl repeated the question, “How did you find us?”

“Came looking for my friend, one I believe you got in there?” Merle explained. “Ebony ninja warrior?”

“Your _friend_?” Rick asked and Merle turned to him.

“Yeah, Sheriff!” Merle yelled at him, laughter in his voice. “Did ya handcuff her to a pipe? That how ya greet people ya just met?”

“She ain’t handcuffed,” Daryl told him.

“So ya do got her in there! Michonne, with the katana?”

“Yeah, she’s in there alright,” Daryl told her.

“Yeah… As glad and I am to see ya, baby brother, I’m gonna have to see with my own eyes if she alright, if ya don’t mind. Don’t like that tone ya got there.”

Merle tried talking away and into the prison but Rick put a hand up to stop him, Daryl rushing to stand by Rick.

“Not you hold up a minute. How is that that she finds us out of the blue, and them minutes after you find us too?”

“Didn’t find ya, dickhead!” Merle said crossing his arms, the knife poking out of his stump up but not intentionally threatening. “Knew all along this prison was here. We got a place a few miles away.”

“You gonna tell us it’s Woodbury?” Daryl asked him.

“It ain’t. And no more bullshit, I ain’t telling ya anything else until I see Michonne’s safe and sound!”

* * *

She was standing, wound tended to, arms resting on the bars and hanging outside, looking pissed out of her mind at anyone around when she saw Merle come in. Her expression changed immediately and she straightened up, stunned to see him there.

“Merle!”

He walked straight to her, looking at her up and down to check she was fine, “What the fuck is she locked in for?!” he asked when he turned around and away from her.

“She says our friends were taken,” Rick said.

“You remember Glenn from camp,” Daryl completed and Merle turned to look at Michonne again.

“The Governor’s got them,” Michonne told and then added really low, “You know _she’s_ gonna wanna get them back.”

“You told ‘em?”

“I haven’t. I wasn’t the best reception.”

“Whatever you’re whispering over there,” Rick stopped them. “We gotta go get our friends back.”

“Ya ain’t answered my question!” Merle yelled as he turned to them again. “Why the fuck’s she locked up?”

“’Cause ain’t no way we know she’s telling the truth!” Daryl answered in the same.

“They think I’m lying about Woodbury and it’s some sort of trap.”

“Bullshit!” Merle yelled again. “This woman don’t lie! She says china boy was taken to Woodbury, then china boy was taken to Woodbury!”

“Either way we’re gonna go see if it’ real before –”

“It real! I lived there once. Worked for the governor ‘til I quit’em!”

“Not gonna help them trust us, Merle,” Michonne told him.

“Yeah, Merle, that don’t help a lot,” Rick told him.

Merle was silent for a moment until he slowly started laughing. The others looked confused at each other but said nothing.

“Stepped up at the leader then, have ya? How well it turned out for ya that yer friend Officer Sniffers offed _her_ , ain’t it? The original leader of this group? _Sam?_ ”

Rick looked enraged but it was Daryl who reacted, walking quickly to Merle and stopping right at his face, “How the fuck you know that happened? Huh?!”

Merle didn’t flinch nor defend himself, he just kept smiling, and very low and softly said, “Cause she ain’t dead, little brother. _Sam’s alive_.”

Everything froze.

Eyes wide in his brother’s, Daryl shook his head fast and nonstop for a long moment.

“No. No, ya full of crap. She ain’t –”

He stopped to see Merle raise his eyebrows and just nod for a moment. “She didn’t die that night, Daryl,” and then he looked at Rick, who had his eyes wide and completely shocked with the information. “Ya saw it all wrong, Sheriff. Girl wasn’t dead yet. Ya shot the man and he stopped killin’ ‘er. Was no dead yet.”

“I saw her,” Daryl was saying nearly over him. “I saw it too, she was turned, was with the walkers, I saw her!”

“Covered in guts and blood,” Michonne said from inside her cell and Daryl looked at her. “Too hurt to run or fight the walkers. I know all about that story too. I know what you saw.”

Daryl stepped away from Merle and started pacing with no direction, repeating “No” over and over, hands in his head.

“That’s – not,” Rick was trying to speak, his head low, “he was on her. Strangling. She was down… I couldn’t… I couldn’t… Get to her with the walkers, she was… She was dead,” and he looked up to Merle and then to Michonne. “She wasn’t dead?”

“I can say it over and over again,” Merle said impatiently. “Little Miss Tattoo blondie princess Sam Danes,” and then he shouted as loud as he could, “IS FUCKIN’ ALIVE!”

Rick sat down and Daryl was frozen staring at Merle. Other people started coming in having heard all the interaction and asking questions, confused, and Merle just rolled his eyes and turned away from them. He’d never liked these people anyway and there were even people he hadn’t met before. He turned his back to all of them and rested his arms on the cell bars with Michonne. She nodded at him with a smile, knowing one of them would have had to tell one moment or another.

“Where is she?” Daryl asked, his voice shaking, as he stood nearer now. There was silence from the others. “You tell me where she is,” he insisted when Merle said nothing. “You take me to her!!”

“Now why the fuck would I do that?!” Merle swirled around to face his brother, angrily. “When you’re keeping her best friend locked up in a fucking cage?!”

After another stunned moment, the reaction came from someone nobody was expecting. They described her as a mousy woman with short grey hair – Carol moved from her spot over to Rick and took the ring of keys forcefully from his waist.

“Hey!” he reacted trying to take it from her and Carol moved it out of his reach, ignoring him completely and moving to the cell. She struggled a little to find the right key but unlocked and opened it, and then looked at Michonne through the open door.

“If you’re Sam’s friend, you’re my friend.”

With a stunned smile, Michonne nodded at her and stepped out of the cell. Merle rested a hand on her shoulder, looking over her and she nodded at him too, telling him she was alright.

“I want my bag and my sword back,” she said looking around and finding Rick’s eyes. The man was stunned, mouth opened. “She sent you after me?” she asked Merle.

“Yeah, was bitchin’ ‘bout you going out alone and that she ain’t gonna allow it no more.”

“Where’s your radio?”

Merle reached to the back of his waistband and took it from there. “Don’t know it’s in range.”

Michonne pressed the button, “Sam, you there?”

“ _Michonne?! You okay?!_ ”

In the prison, there was silence for a second and then people started laughing, perked up at my voice coming out of the radio. Daryl froze again, looking at the radio in Michonne’s hand as if he would be able to see me though there.

Merle says his eyes were filled with tears and they started falling then, his chin trembling a little.

 _Oh, my Daryl_! And I had no idea I was so close to seeing him again!

“I’m fine!”

“Is Merle there?”

“Yes, he found me.”

Merle took the radio from Michonne then and pressed the button before I could answer, “How ya doin’ Sammy girl!”

They all heard me say “Don’t call me Sammy” and there was a little laughter around. Everyone had heard me say it before, it was like it was proof it was really me. “Where are you? You coming home?”

Merle and Michonne exchanged a look.

“Not yet, I’d say,” Merle gave his opinion.

“Yeah,” Michonne agreed. “Not the kind of thing you tell over the radio.”

“It’s dark outside,” Merle said looking out a high, small barred window. “We’ll take’em there in the morning.”

“ _Michonne?”_

“No!” Daryl stopped them. “Now. You’ll take me there now!”

“Listen, I don’t know what _your_ leader’s orders are,” Michonne said to Daryl and she threw a dirty look at Rick, “But _ours_ says no traveling at night or even staying outside in the dark unless you can help it. Sam’s own decision,” and she pressed the button to speak again before he could answer. “We’ll be back at first light tomorrow. Too dark already.”

“Are you safe? Gonna be safe until morning?”

“We’re safe, don’t worry.”

“Good. Good, okay. Thank you for reaching out, I was sick worried here.”

“I know you were,” she said smiling and asked, “How are things there?”

“All in order,” I informed her. “Found two kids in the woods and brought them home yesterday. I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow. Please, no delays in the morning, okay?”

“You got it. We’ll see you soon. Good night!”

“Night. G’night, asshole!”

He just laughed there, by Michonne, and they said no more on the radio.

“Is this for real?” Carol asked Michonne.

“You’re Carol, right?” Michonne asked and Carol nodded. “How would I know that if Sam hadn’t told me?”

Carol smiled bringing her hands to her mouth and then she looked at Daryl, who was still utterly stunned. Michonne, seeing where she was looking and sensing Daryl’s distress, poked Merle and pointed at his brother. Merle got it instantly.

“Come on, little brother. Let’s go on and get ourselves a little jabber.”

It was dark outside when they sat together overlooking the vast grassy area in front of the prison, stray walkers far at the fence not causing any trouble for now.

“You gotta tell me you ain’t bullshitting me,” Daryl started as he got up again after sitting for just seconds and paced in front of his brother. “That ain’t the kinda thing you joke about.”

Calmly, Merle took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and lit one up before offering it to Daryl, who hesitated just for a moment before taking one too.

“I know all about the CDC. Atlanta… The farm, the kid who got shot, the girl who died in the woods, the fuckin’ barn. Know all about you two hookin’ up. About the sonofabitch tryin’ ta murder ‘er. Ya tell me how’d I know it all is she ain’t alive.”

Daryl said nothing, just kept pacing, smoking quickly, deep puffs.

“Guess I’ll only believe when I see’er,” he finally said. “’Cause that ain’t possible. I saw her… Saw her walkin’. Rick saw her on the ground, Shane strangling her –”

“And then he shot the man but couldn’t go there to check on’er ‘cause of the herd that was right there. Then ya saw her up and walkin’ among’em. Ain’t that what happened?” and Daryl just nodded, a bit too fast showing how nervous he was. “She’d killed a walker before, was covered in blood and guts. She was alive, little brother.”

“Mean she saw me? Then? When I saw’er?”

Merle nodded gravelly. “Saw ya… Heard ya too.”

Daryl threw the butt of the cigarette angrily to the ground them and brought his hands up to rub his face, turning his back to Merle to hide his emotions as he usually had to do his whole life. He’d be teased if he demonstrated any feelings. Merle didn’t judge, though, not this Merle. He just stayed in silence, knowing the question that was gonna inevitably come. Daryl turned to him again after a long moment and finally asked.

“The baby?”

Merle also threw his cigarette as he got up and took two steps to stand in front of Daryl, and rested a hand heavily on his shoulder and breathed out slowly before telling him.

“Sorry, brother. Your boy didn’t make it.”

Merle says Daryl was unable to keep holding it together then. He cried, his head lowering as he stepped away from Merle and paced around, nervous, grieving. He walked over to the closest fence and held on tightly to it, leaning down. I can only imagine what he was feeling. He’d mourned me and the baby before, went through all the pain and the feelings, and then he hears I’m alive and nearby and then this flicker of hope for the baby as well, only to get mercilessly crushed, and the mourning for him coming back, fresh and kicking. Repeated mourning.

He stayed like that for minutes, Merle could hear him cry quietly from where he stood, lit another cigarette, and just waited in silence. After a while, Daryl moved back to him.

“How?” he asked with his voice trembling.

Merle shook his head, “Was born too early. But that’s her story to tell, brother. That and others I’m sure she’ll want to be the one to tell.”

Daryl nodded ad he bit on his lower lip, staring at Merle for a moment. “Ya different, Merle.”

“Clean. Bet ya never seen me like that before.”

“Never. Clean all the way?”

“The occasional weed don’t count, now do it?” and Daryl shook his head. “Yeah, bro, clean all the way. But that ain’t all,” Merle said as he turned to go sit back down. Silently, Daryl followed him but didn’t sit, he stood there near his brother. “Got a home now. A real one, not like the shit you and I had growin’ up. Girl gave me a home, job, responsibility, got me convinced I could do it. Know that if I fuck up now, be fuckin’ up a whole lotta other stuff wi’me.”

It was clear Daryl had no idea what to say to it because it probably felt like this was a complete stranger talking to him. This was not the Merle Daryl knew, and it was not the Merle I had known either, but I’d been living with this new person for months so I was used to it. Daryl would too.

“Where is it?” Daryl asked already with another cigarette. “Where ya’ll live? Is it near?”

“Nearer than ya’d think but if I tell ya now ya gonna slip away and go there tonight. Know ya, little brother. Nah, talking ya there in the morning along with these assholes. Gonna surprise the fuck outta Sammy girl.”

“Don’t call her Sammy.”

Day 310

Daryl woke up everyone who was going before sunrise. Merle and Michonne had shared an empty cell, Merle with a mattress on the floor and Michonne on the bunk bed, both of them extremely uncomfortable for being inside a jail cell and in such bad beds. They were used to their own homes and nicer mattresses in real bedrooms.

He was already out by the car, the same one they’d packed the day before in the postponed intention of going to Woodbury. They’d need the stuff because the plan was to go to the Village, get me, have a reunion and whatever, and then we’d all go to Woodbury to rescue Glenn and Maggie. How did they think a reunion like this would go simply and quickly, I had no idea, but I don’t think Daryl was even thinking straight. They tell me he was pacing, nervous, snapping at everyone for being too slow and that they had to go _now_. They didn’t even eat, just finally followed Daryl into the car, Rick driving, Michonne in front with him and Merle and Daryl behind.

“Where is this place, anyway?” Rick asked as, with Michonne's instruction, they got to the empty road.

“We call it the Village,” Michonne told them. “South of Brooks, not even ten miles east from here.”

“Ya been that near… How long?” Daryl asked from the back seat

“Four months or so,” she answered. “Had a lot of work to get it going. You all haven’t been at the prison for too long, have you?”

“Not long. Just a few days, in fact,” Rick told her.

“You were on the road all this time?”

Rick nodded silently for a moment, “Yeah… All this time.”

Before the conversation could move on, both Merle and Michonne’s radios came to like, startling them all.

“ _Sam, do you hear me_?”

Rick looked back at Daryl, both of them trying to understand it.

“That’s Mikki,” Merle said to everyone.

“ _Clearly, what’s up_?” they heard me answer.

“ _I see cars coming down the road towards us, bit slow._ ”

It was Michonne and Merle who exchanged a look then.

“ _Pro’ly Merle and Michonne coming back,_ ” I said again to all their ears.

“We ain’t that close, are we?” Daryl asked to no one specific.

“ _Nope. Not their cars._ ”

“ _I’m on my way._ ”

There was silence on the radio again.

“Hey Sheriff, it’d be nice is ya could put pedal to metal over there!” Merle barked at Rick.

“ _Sam, quick, they’ve stopped!_ ”

“Shit!” Michonne cursed from her seat.

“ _You’re armed, right?_ ” they heard me ask and also heard my feet hitting the ground.

“ _I am, but they –_ ”

“Did we lose signal?” Michonne asked worried, looking back at Merle.

“No, she just stopped talkin’.”

“ _Mikki?!”_ I called from the radio.

Rick had sped up already and Merle lifted his radio to speak, “What’s goin’ on over there?”

“ _Gonna know in a minute!_ ”

“That happens a lot? People coming to the gate?” Rick asked

“Just once before…” Michonne answered and looked back, exchanging a meaningful look with Merle.

Three or four minutes in silence later, when they had already turned from one road to another, accelerating towards the Village, both radios spoke again.

“ _Miranda, you got Ma and Emma?_ ” they head me ask.

“ _I got them!_ ” the answer came.

“ _You three stay in there no matter what until one of us go get you!_ ”

“ _Got it!_ ”

And then I spoke directly to them, “ _Michonne, Merle, you get your ass back here RIGHT NOW!_ ”

“On our way already!” Merle answered immediately, beating Michonne to it. “Fuck’s happenin’ there?”

“ _He found us,_ ” they heard me say in a dead serious voice. “ _The Governor’s here._ ”

“Fuck!!” Michonne cried

“Sonofabitch!!” Merle yelled at the same time, his fist hitting the inside of the car door by his side. “Gonna kill that motherfucker!!”

“We’re close! You’d better run, sheriff!” Michonne told him and he accelerated even more. “When we get there, you all shoot to kill. They are not playing around, do you hear me?”

“Six minutes,” Merle said through the radio to inform me and got no more answers.


	43. Day 310, part 2

My eyes were swollen and probably purple when the car entered through the gates of what I knew to be Woodbury. They weren’t swollen shut all the way, thankfully, I could still see. It had not been a peaceful ride. I’d still fought but the fact the two men besides the driver had guns pointed at me made it much more difficult.

I wanted to know his plans. Why did he want me here? If he wanted revenge, he could have tried harder to kill me at the Village. With a tightness in my chest, I thought he would probably send a troop there while I was gone and attack again, destroy it. _God, no, please no_ … As of me, I’d handle it. He’d try to beat me, torture or something because he was a goddamn sick sonofabitch, but _fuck, please_ , don’t destroy the Village.

I hoped someone back home thought of it. Of protecting, of people staying there, of not everyone going to get me back at Woodbury. People needed to stay there to protect it, but I knew they’d come to me. Daryl was there, he’d seen me, he knew I was alive, and he tried stopping the Governor from taking me.

He was coming. Daryl was coming to get me.

I still didn’t know why the fuck he’d been there, of course, he or Rick, but then I remembered the Governor telling me about Glenn and Maggie and it all clicked. Maggie had seen Glenn being tortured and instead of leading them right to wherever they lived, she sent them some other way, probably some random direction, and he’d just stumbled upon the Village. They were here, the same place I was being dragged into.

Good. I’d get them and then get the fuck outta there.

We clearly entered through some sort of back gate because they dragged me straight into a building and nobody had been around the little of the area that I saw. They had trouble tying my hands because I wouldn’t just let them that easily, but I could have fought more. Again, guns made me reconsider my fight. My wrists were tied together in front of me with strong silver tape.

It was a large room with a table and a chair in the center, the walls made of metal. I was shoved in and left alone. I first tried the door, but it had obviously been locked from the outside, so I moved around the room trying to find something, _anything_ that would be useful. There was only the wooden chair and table. I crouched down to see it maybe someone had taped a gun or a knife or whatever under the table, but there was nothing.

There was noise coming from the other side of the metal wall. I went over there and pressed my ear to it, trying to understand, but the sounds were muffled. It was people’s voices and I hoped Glenn and Maggie were there, or at least nearby.

It’s when the door opened and two heavily armed men entered, stood on each side of the door for a second before the Governor came in, theatrically.

“You put up a hell of a fight, don’t you, Lynn?” he started as I slowly walked from the wall to the center of the room. That was not gonna be pretty. “I could use people like you and your friends. They fought all they could too.”

“Where are they?” I demanded

“Oh, near. Right there,” he told me looking towards the wall. “Not really sure what to do with them now they got me what I wanted.”

“Let’em go. Your problem’s with me and you got me. Just let’em go.”

“I could,” he said nonchalantly as he walked in slowly towards me. “But there’s more I want to know for now, so I’ll be keeping them for a while longer.”

“What do you want?”

“First of all…”

He stopped and looked at me right in the eye as he stood in front of me, but he said nothing else. I did see it coming, his fist moving from his side to my stomach, and I shoved my tied hands down to try and stop him. I did falter him a little but got punched anyway. The air escaped my lungs in a painful grunt and I doubled over.

“You see, I’m not much into hurting women, but you… You, Lynn, you got my men killed. Stole cars and weapons, my property! Slaughtered them all,” and he spoke slowly now, leaving down to look at my face where I was still doubled over trying to catch my breath, “except for _Merle_. How did that happen, Lynn? Mind telling me? Huh? How did you get one of my most loyal men to turn on me like that?”

I laughed, now able to breathe again, thanks to the bad guy’s long speech.

“Loyal? To _you_?” and I laughed again. “How deserving of loyalty do you think you are, Gov?”

That earned me a backhand slap across the face. My whole body turned to the side and I nearly stumbled, but I refused to fall. I looked at him, my face burning, my broken nose throbbing, but I moved on.

“You’re just a psychopath, _Philip_. You don’t deserve any of their loyalties,” I pointed at the men standing at the door with my chin. “And you sure as fuck never got Merle’s.”

He was nodding with that arrogant smile, “You two go way back, don’t you? You and Merle?”

“Hell yeah. Merle’s my brother, you asshole.”

He took a second still smiling and looking at me and then he took a step back and started laughing.

Ok, maybe I’d said too much. Just shut the fuck up next time, Sam.

“Oh, wow!” he was saying as he laughed. “That’s just too good! Too fucking good! You’re a _Dixon?”_ I said nothing, just held him under my angry gaze. “Lynn Dixon? How come he never said anything about you, then?”

“You gotta be too fuckin’ stupid to think the only type of brother someone can have is by blood.”

“I see,” he sobered up but still smiled, nodding. “Well, no matter. If he’s your _brother_ , as you say, he’ll be coming for you. Won’t he? And then he and I will have a little heart to heart. Until then, you and your little friends will stay right here. And before I forget…”

Again, he hit me. A punch on my face, missing my broken nose for inches, right in the eye. Fuck, that was gonna swallow. My face was throbbing and I couldn’t avoid the second punch to my stomach. This time I fell. Everything hurt and I could barely breathe, the blood coming out of my nose making it even harder. I curled to my side trying to protect myself from the next blow, but it didn’t come. Instead, he knelt by my side and right in front of my face I could see a knife, a long and sharp hunting knife. I tried recoiling, but he grabbed my shirt and tore it apart with the knife. I got a cut on my shoulder from it, and in seconds he had ripped the whole fabric from me, finishing his job by cutting open my bra as well.

“You’re a good looking thing,” he said a bit breathless as he got up. “I might allow my men a little bit of fun with you later on.”

And as he reached the door, he turned around once more, seeing me try to sit up, hands on the ground pushing myself up.

“But for now, let’s just see what you’re capable of.”

Fuck, what the hell did he mean by that?”

A moment later another man came pushing a struggling walker in front of him on a leash. The Governor left, then the two armed men left, and the walker was released. I jumped to my feet, swaying a little, hurting all over but totally alert now. Then the last men left as well, closing the door behind him. It was just me and the fucking walker now, and my hands were tied. _Fuck_. I could deal with it, but _son of a bitch_.

It came grunting at me and I rounded the table, making space between us. Ignoring the existence of it, the walker came forward, tumbling over it, hands stretched trying to grab me. I reached out for the back of its head and took hold of the little hair there was still there. The skin of the scalp started to come off the bone in my hands, but I plunged the head down anyway, the forehead hitting the wooden table strongly. Still, it grunted, hands not stopping, so I did it again, and again, and again. The forehead was already broken and sunken in but it wasn’t dead yet.

I needed something sharp, so I let go of it and the sight it made was something of a nightmare. It had no face no more, it was all sunken and a bloody mess, but still, it got up from the table and followed my sound and smell as I rounded the table again to grab hold of the chair. My hands were too close to each other for me to grab it well, but I held it the best I could and used it to shove the walker away. It fell back, hitting the table and sliding to the floor. I screamed at the force it took me to lift the chair with tied hands and to try and plunge on of the legs of it into its head.

It was done. I let go of the chair and stumbled backward until my back hit the cold metal of the wall. I could feel my heart pounding on my entire body. I looked around and understood the men were gone, clearly believing I’d be dead in there when they come back.

That sonofabitch was full of bullshit. How’d he wanted to keep me alive and then shove a fucking walker inside with me? Incoherent, to say the least. But no matter now. I was hurt, and naked, and I had to get the fuck outta there. I considered taking the scraps that used to be the walker’s shirt to cover myself with but it was putrid. I preferred to run around naked.

I took a long, steadying breath and focused before moving to the door. It had a square glass and I watched the corridor for a moment before trying to open it. It was unlocked. Slowly and carefully, I opened it and peeked into the hall, returning immediately inside because there were people there, by the next door. I looked again, only my eye peeking out, and saw it was the same man from before, doing the fucking same thing, shoving a walker inside a room. They closed the door and laughing, walked away, gaining distance from me in my hiding. I waited for them to turn on a corner to move, and ran to the next door. Though the same glass square, I looked in.

Maggie and Glenn were in there, their hands tied back as they sat on side by side chairs. Glenn was shirtless and his face was beaten, and they were both struggling on their seats. Was it some kind of a sick fetish of the Governor’s, locking people in with the dead?

I looked along the corridor to make sure nobody was returning and doing, I saw an emergency fire axe box. Right there, just waiting. The asshole really didn’t think I’d make it out of that room alive.

Axe in hand I moved back to the door and kicked the fuck out of it. It flew open, hitting the back wall with a loud bang, the walker that had been an inch away from Maggie’s face, who was screaming desperately, turned around to look at me.

“Come at me, motherfucker!!” I yelled to get it even more interested in me and it worked. The head split open in two under the blade of the axe. I always liked fighting with axes.

Laughing, I looked from the dead walker to them, tied in their chairs, their faces stunned, eyes and mouths wide, staring at me, someone who should be dead for months now, who’d just come to save them in the last second.

“Hey, guys!” I said with a wide smile. I had them!

“Watch out!” Glenn yelled and I turned to see a barrel of a pistol pointed right at my forehead, some other guard I hadn’t seen yet.

“Drop it!” he yelled spitting at me and I obeyed instantly, the axe falling heavily to the floor. “Hands up!”

My hands were still tied and it was getting on my nerves, I needed them free. I lifted my hands anyway but as they got on level with the gun, I grabbed it and the man’s hand, twisting his wrist to make it point down and kept on until it pointed upside-down at his own body. It was so fast that when he pulled the trigger, he shot himself and I was left with the gun in my hand as he fell. Behind him, another man entered and I shot him in the head instantly.

My eighth and ninth kills lay on the floor and I turned again to my friends behind me, shocked senseless.

“Let’s get the fuck outta here,” I told them and went behind their chairs, working on untying the rope on Maggie’s wrist first.

“My God, Sam!” she was saying.

“You’re alive!” Glenn said by her side.

“What the hell is going on?” Maggie asked.

“I have no idea!” I told them as Maggie’s hands got free and I moved to Glenn’s as she got up from the chair. “Governor found my community and attacked it and then Rick and Daryl were there and I got no fuckin’ idea how they found me!”

“Wait, what?” he asked, not absorbing a word.

“And then he brought me here and I found you. It’s all I know.”

“Means they are coming to get us back,” Maggie said as she approached again just as I freed Glenn. She reached for the tape around my wrists, found the end of it and tore it away, and then handed me a t-shirt I guess she’d taken from one of the dead men. I took it and then she was hugging me tightly.

“You’re alive,” she breathed.

I hugged her back, “I found you,” I said but we let go quickly. Glenn was already perforating the dead man’s head with the axe and taking hold of the fallen gun as I put the t-shit on. It smelled like stale sweat.

We moved to the door, only Maggie unarmed and just as we went out two more men came. It happened so fast and I had no idea what happened to Glenn there, but I had one man killed with the axe and when I turned Maggie was pointing a gun she’d taken from him to the other man who had a knife to Glenn’s throat.

“Let him go!!” she yelled.

He hesitated for a moment, my axe up and ready to strike him when he looked behind us and smiled. Other three armed ones were there and they got us, shoving us back into the room and making us kneel a moment before covering out heads with fabric bags. We were dragged away; I knew they were still with me because I could hear them whimper.

Just a moment after we were taken out of the room there was a weird sound of something metal hitting the floor and then the men were yelling and there was shooting and I freaked out because I had no idea what was happening. In seconds I was again being dragged away and I fought like hell but the hand on my upper arm was strong and I was too confused.

I was in the open air then, I felt we were outside and after a moment the bag was removed from my head even as I was still being dragged away, running. I looked around to understand what was happening, and I was scared of not knowing, my arm swinging strongly to get whoever was gripping my arm to let go.

“Hey, it’s me!”

It was him.

 _It was him_!

Daryl was right there and I was too stunned to say anything, I just kept looking up at him as he grabbed my arm again and kept on dragging me away. I looked around there, and there was Rick too, and Michonne and Merle, as well as Glenn and Maggie. My people were here, Daryl was here and _fuck_ , how I wished it had been a more peaceful scenario when I found him because there was no time for a tearful reunion now. We entered an empty building and Daryl let go of me, he, Rick and Merle pointing their weapons around to make sure nobody was in there. Glenn flopped to the ground, Maggie following him.

“No way out back here,” Daryl said after looking around just as Merle held me by my shoulders, surveying me.

“Hell, the fuck did they do to you?”

“Ain’t as bad as it looks,” I said breathless, aware Rick, Maggie, and Glenn were talking but I didn’t hear. I looked past Merle to Daryl who was standing there swaying on his place, nervous and looking at us. I looked back at Merle, “Merle, you gotta be careful. He knows you betrayed him, he’s out for your blood.”

“Don’t ya worry ‘bout me.”

“You all okay?” I asked everyone but I was looking at Daryl, walking past Merle and going to him.

He was so, so _scared_. Like he’d been here doing this rescue all this time but now, seeing me really there, he seemed terrified, shocked, his eyes were wide and he was biting on his lower lip, his eyebrows tensed together. I reached out for him, holding his shoulders – _I was touching him!_ – and looking at him up and down to make sure he wasn’t shot or something and that all this time he was apart from me he’d been _fine_.

“Where’s that woman?” I heard Maggie ask and I swirled around to look at each of them.

“Merle, where’s Michonne?” I asked him as I let go of Daryl and went to the window where Rick was already looking out.

“She was right behind us!” he told me and then looked from the window at me, the same wide eyes Daryl had. I guess that’s how people look like when they see someone who was supposed to be dead.

“Ya think they got her?” Merle asked.

“Want me to go look for her?” Daryl offered, just like what I’d expect from him.

“No,” Merle and I answered at the same time and I continued, “She knows where we are?”

“She was right with us all the time,” Daryl answered as she approached us by the window.

“She got something in mind,” I said still looking out the window and then turned. Daryl was _right there_. “She’ll catch up with us, we can go. You got any weapons for me?”

“Take this,” he said sliding the assault rifle he’d had on his back all the time, identical to the one he’d been using.

“How many of those you got?!” I asked wanting to laugh.

“We live in a prison, got plenty!”

I did let a laugh come out then because we’d been right about the prison. It had to be a damn goldmine.

“Okay, everyone, stay together,” Rick said and we all, even Glenn who could barely walk, joined him by the door. He counted down, opened the door and Daryl threw two smoke grenades on the street and came back inside. In a few seconds, Rick said _okay_ and we all ran out the door, surrounded by smoke.

We were very close to a barrier they had made with busses and the smoke worked for nothing because they saw us immediately and started shooting. We all shot back, moving together, nothing could be heard other than shooting and shooting and the occasional yell.

“Behind you!” was one of the shouts I got, Daryl telling someone about the shooters that came from behind.

We ran until we reached a porch ahead where we finally took cover. Seriously, it was a miracle that none of us got shot. We crouched down there, recharging or taking new weapons from the bags they had.

“How many?” Rick shouted to ask.

“’Bout twelve, six on each side!” Merle told him because, well, he knew Woodbury.

“No matter, there’ll be more of’em!” Daryl said as he worked on his weapon.

“Any grenades left?” Rick asked and Daryl nodded effusively. “Get’em ready, we gotta run to that wall!”

“You guys go ahead,” Daryl said. “I’m gonna lay down some cover fire.”

“No!” I crouched down by him holding his arm and making him look at me. “We ain’t splitting up now!”

“It’s too dangerous!” he told me. “Ya’ll need cover! I’ll be right behind ya!”

“I’ll go with you!” Merle said. “Relax baby girl, we gonna catch up with ya!”

“Oh for fuck’s sake!” was all I could answer. He tried getting up but I grabbed his arm again and said almost angrily, “DON’T. DIE.”

“Ain’t no way I’m dyin’ now,” he told me and he and Merle moved, throwing the grenades to make the wall of smoke so we’d be able to go. It was all a mess again, I could barely see with the eye I got punched in swallowing even more in the past minutes and nearly closing, and all the smoke and my heart pounding in my ears. We managed to get to a bus then and climbed up it, Daryl and Merle’s distraction working because nobody was shooting at us now – _please, please don’t die_. Glenn and Maggie climbed first, she needed to help him, and I did next. When I was on the roof of the bus, Rick was coming up as well. We were nearly out.

“Daryl!!! Merle!!!” I screamed at the top of my lungs then. They had to come _now_.

“Go!!!” I heard one of them answer

“Fuck!!!” I screamed back and allowed Rick to drag me away.

There was a stationary train near there and we ran along it, Rick, Glenn, Maggie and I, I was missing Daryl, Merle, and Michonne and _fuck_ I needed them all to come back here now! We stopped hiding behind a car and from there we could see the outer wall, the busses we’d seen from the inside. The shooting had stopped.

“Come on, guys…” I whispered hoping they’d hear.

There was a noise behind us, feet on gravel, and we all looked back to see Michonne get up from crouching past under the train. She was limping and bloodied. A hard breath left my lungs.

“Mich!!” I whisper-yelled and ran to her. Her expression relaxed seeing me and she opened her arms to hug me back. “What happened to you? Did you kill him?”

“Tried, but he’s still alive. He’s sicker than we think, but I’ll tell you later. Where are the others?”

I turned to go back crouching with the others by the car, Michonne following, “Merle and Daryl stayed behind to cover us, but they ain’t you yet. Somethin’s happened.”

“We’re gonna have to go back for them, then,” she said crouching real close to me.

“Damn right,” Rick agreed. “They pro’ly think we’re gone, won’t be expecting us to return after escaping.”

“Yeah, we wouldn’t be _that_ stupid,” I said smiling and got up, going to where Maggie and Glenn were sitting together. “You guys got a car somewhere?”

Rick joined us, followed by Michonne, “It’s parked a mile away, why?”

“Too far. I wanted them to go wait at the car,” I said pointing at Glenn, “but it won’t be safe to go alone now.”

“I can help,” Maggie said but it was clear she couldn’t. Traumatized, scared, and she needed to be with Glenn, who had no conditions to help now at all.

“Glenn needs you,” I told her. “You two’ll have to wait here.”

“She’s right, we’ll come back for you,” Rick agreed. “You hide the best you can. Take these.”

He handed each of them a gun and with nods of goodbye, Rick, Michonne and I left, running back the same way we had come and entering Woodbury once again through the same route. In rushed whispers, we agreed to look for them in the same building and rooms Glenn, Maggie and I had been taken to and ran in the shadows there. The streets were emptying, so it was easy to not be noticed. The whole building was deserted, though, except for the dead bodies we had left behind. Michonne sliced off the heads of a couple of walkers on our way out.

We were walking, now without knowing even where to look anymore, when I heard something. I made them both stop by touching them silently, and brought a finger to my lips asking for silence, and then pointing at my ear, asking for them to listen. After a moment they both understood at the same time. We were hearing people, seemed like a gathering like a crowd speaking. Exchanging meaningful looks, we headed there.

“You proved not to be loyal to your community!” we heard the Governor’s loud voice from inside a huge shed. “Pretended to be dead all this time!” he was saying as we crouched behind a metal dumpster. “Killed your own people and turned your back on _me_! Led these terrorists in here to destroy us all! Now you must pay for your betrayal! Here, right now!”

And the people around were cheering, yelling “ _Kill’em!_ ” and it was all theatrical. Looking from above the dumpster, I saw Daryl and Merle at the very center of it all, looking around nervously, hands tied behind their backs. I could see Daryl was looking repeatedly from Merle to the place and people around him, looking for something. He was looking for any sign of us. He was looking for me.

“Led your own brother inside to his certain death!” the lunatic kept speaking. I saw him more clearly then. He had a bandage on his head, a patch covering his right eye. A Michonne work, for sure. He kept on theatrically talking, “Now you’ll reap what you sow! Brother against brother! Winer _might_ walk free!”

Oh, that was funny. He really thought the Dixons would fight to the death so one of them would be able to _maybe_ walk free? I could swear I saw Merle mouth something to Daryl, his thin lips nearly still. They were agreeing on some sort of action, which was the absolute right thing to do. They needed to buy time.

The Governor’s men came with walkers on leashes again then, closing an area around the Dixons. People were cheering, the sick bastards, and then it all started to get confusing again. Their hands were untied and they started rounding each other as if they were going to start fighting, but in a sudden movement, they turned their backs to each other, ready to fight the living and the dead.

Together. It was beautiful to see the Dixon brothers together again, fighting as one. I smiled as I looked at the others.

“Now!” I yelled in a whisper.

Taking cover behind the metal dumpster, we aimed and started shooting, first the leashed walkers, and the pandemonium started. People didn’t know where we were, so they couldn’t shoot us. Townsfolk started running away in terror, which was ironic since just a moment before they were cheering two brothers being put to fight to the death.

The walkers gone, I aimed at the living people. Three fell dead and I didn’t mind updating my kill count in my head. Rick threw more smoke grenades in the crowd and we kept shooting, people running past us so terrified they didn’t even look twice at us. Rick stopped shooting to use a lantern to signal them where we were and a moment later Merle and Daryl were reaching us, Daryl’s hand instantly closing around my arm as the others said we should go.

“No! He’s still there!”

“Sam, no!” Michonne said by my other side.

“He’ll go back there; he’ll destroy the Village! We can’t let him live!”

“We can’t even see him!” Daryl insisted but I shook his arm off.

I turned to face him real close, “He took my community once, he ain’t taking it again! I need to do this!”

I could hear him yell “Sam!!” as I got up and ran away from them, not giving him or the others the time to stop me. I knew they would, but if I let it go, just left now with him still alive, he would send his troop to the Village, he would get Merle killed as revenge, and Michonne who’d tried to kill him too, and everything would be gone.

I had just gotten Daryl back; I’d be damned if I let a freaking psychopath take it from me.

There was no more shooting because they all had fled and the smoke was blinding everyone. My rifle had been left behind because I knew I would be able to aim at him now. I ran to the center of the area and looked around, trying to see him, and I did. The Governor had his back to me as the smoke started to dissipate, he was looking around as if thinking he was alone there.

_Now._

I ran towards him, knowing I had to do it fast because his men could still be around, and that he probably had a gun.

 _Don’t hesitate_.

I got to him in a sprint, slid an arm under his left one and the other around his neck and held my own arm, chuck holding him. He screamed in the scare, his back bending back because he was much taller than me. His hands were free, though, a pistol on his right hand, and he rose it tying to point back at my head. Groaning, I twisted him to the side and dropped him to the ground, my own shoulder hitting the ground strongly with his weight. His armed hand got trapped under us making him unable to point it at me.

I heard the gun go off but I was choking him and then there were people running around and I guessed it was my people because they didn’t attack me. We had to go, they all would come back to kill us at any moment now. So I gave up on the choke and held his head with my both hands, one in his chin and the other on the forehead.

I groaned aloud as I snapped his neck sideways with all the strength I could muster. He stopped moving just as the loud crack of his neck reached my ears.

He was dead.

I was breathing hard and all of a sudden I was in a lot of pain. Really, a lot, like I wasn’t feeling just a second before. My shoulder on the ground screamed at me in pain and my thigh felt like it was burning. The man’s body was shoved away from me and there were hands on my thigh, I saw Michonne pressing her hands to it, saying something, but I couldn’t understand. I did understand that Daryl was on me then, reaching my other arm and lifting me up. I screamed because it all hurt then, even my stomach where I’d been punched before, and they all ran, Daryl carrying me. I hadn’t been that close to him for such a long time!

“He’s dead!” I told him as I hang upside down over his shoulder and he ran.

“Yeah, and you’re shot!”

He was angry. He was really angry and I got it. I risked my life to do this, but he didn’t understand. He had just heard about the motherfucker’s existence, Merle and I had a history with him.

This had to be done, and I’d done it.

It was weird how fast I was being sat on the ground again, my back to a car. I didn’t see the way from the ring to there, outside where we were now. I looked up and saw Michonne’s hands again pressing on my thigh and Daryl tying a rag around it strongly. It hurt like hell and I demonstrated it.

“Gotta stop the bleeding,” he explained the force to me.

Standing up behind him and Michonne, Maggie, Merle, Rick, and Glenn were looking worriedly and I smiled.

“It’s over, it’s alright, why you’re so worried?”

“We gotta go,” Michonne ignored me. “Miranda can help!”

“Prison’s closer!” Daryl said. “We’ll take’er there.”

“Hershel can take care of her,” Rich said breathlessly.

I smiled “Oh, Hershel! Does he kill walkers now?” and I didn’t expect an answer because they were all so tense and freaked out and I just couldn’t understand. “Guys, I’m alright. It’s just my shoulder that hurts.”

Daryl stopped checking on the rag on my thigh to look at my shoulder. He touched it carefully, “It’s just dislocated, will be fine.”

“See, I’m fine!”

“You got shot, Sam!” he said firmly. “You’re losing blood!”

 _Oh_. Was that it? Maybe it’s why I was feeling fuzzy.

“Oh… Fuck,” was all I could say.

“Hey!” he put his hands on my face to make me look at him. I felt weak. “Hey! Don’t die! Don’t you dare dying on me again!”

I smiled up at him. “Ok. I won’t.”


	44. Day 311, part 1

It was silent. So very silent that I didn’t dare to move. I was lying down at a not so cozy bed, so I knew it wasn’t mine, and it was quiet and I was… Well, alive, so it was probably good. But this lasted for just a quick moment, and then I was feeling every single one of the pains in my body. My left eye, my nose, my lip. My right shoulder, that I could feel was immobilized. High in my stomach, my muscle hurt too, and lower, my right thigh. Wounds of the battle. A battle I won, I could still hear the sound of his neck breaking.

At that thought, I really woke up because I guess I’d still been half asleep, and opened my eyes. It was dim like a late afternoon. I seemed to be very close to the ceiling because the concrete was very close to me. I frowned, it was weird, but I got it when I looked around, it was a bunk bed and I was lying in the bottom one inside a small room, a barred door open against the back wall and a colorful sheet hanging there as a door. The space was organized as probably an infirmary, a small rack by the opposite wall was a mess of instruments and meds and right by it on the floor there was a pile of bloodied rags. Damn, they were all mine. I must have lost a lot of blood, so it made sense I felt like sleeping again right now.

But no. I had to gather my wits. Where the fuck was I, to begin with? Last thing I remembered I was outside Woodbury being tended to by Michonne and… Daryl!

I tried sitting up and things swirled around me. I leaned back again resting my weight on my left elbow, my right arm tied against my torso with bandages. I slowed down but didn’t give up in sitting. My thigh burned a little but it was bearable when I swung my legs out of the bed and sat there, supporting myself up with my left arm and looking around for any clue of where I was and for any weapons. Taking a deep breath, I pushed myself up, resting my weight on the unwounded leg and holding on to the upper bed for balance. There was no mattress up there, the space was used as a shelf for the infirmary stuff. It didn’t matter, I looked away and to the yellow sheet hanging there, wondering what I’ find outside.

I was nervous. I didn’t think it would be bad, I knew I’d been taken care of and the last people who were with me had my complete, deep trust, so I was fine. This wasn’t what I was concerned about. Now that the Woodbury thing was over, I was about to see Daryl without all the action and danger, I was _really_ going to _see_ him.

It was different. It was going to be different.

The sheet was thrown to the side then and I had no time to prepare. No deep steadying breath, no thoughts of _oh my god oh my god._

He was there.

Daryl stopped just inside with a hand still on the sheet, keeping it open, startled to see me right there, inches away from him instead of in bed, and he froze, mouth and eyes widening. Air rushed out of my lungs, mixed with a laugh and the sudden tears that filled my eyes. Just like that, from a second to another, I was sobbing.

“Daryl!” I said and let go of the bunk bed, all but throwing myself at him, my free arm circling his neck, unbalancing him. He stood frozen for a few seconds when I just clung to him, crying on his neck, and then finally, _finally_ , he circled me with his arms and lowered his head my neck, straightened his back and lifted me from the ground.

“Sam…” he whispered and I couldn’t answer, I was crying aloud now, not carrying if I was ugly crying or if there were people on the other side of that sheet. Nothing mattered, only that I was in Daryl’s arms, my feet off the ground, his breath against my neck also coming out in sobs.

“I found you!” I cried. “You’re here, I found you!”

The only word he seemed to be able to say was my name, over and over as he cried. Oh my Daryl… Crying in my arms. Here, real, solid, not a dream. My Daryl.

“You died,” he was finally able to speak. “You died, Sam… You died.”

I nodded strongly against his neck, “I know… I did, but I didn’t, Daryl, I’m here…”

“I saw you. I thought… You were dead, Sam…”

“I know… I know you thought.”

“If I knew… If I knew I’d… I shoulda known!”

“There’s no way you coulda known,” and I squeezed him even more, “and I know you’d never give up on findin’ me if ya did.”

“I’d find you. But I wasn’t lookin’.”

“I know but I was. I was looking, all the time, all this time I was looking...”

“I lost you, Sam… It fuckin’ killed me.”

“You didn’t lose me, I’m here, I’m right here!”

“Can’t believe this is real,” he whispered shaking his head against my neck.

I laughed aloud among my sobs then, “I know! I thought I’d never… I wanted, I wanted so fuckin’ much but sometimes I just thought it’d never happen…”

I couldn’t speak more then. I just cried, I sobbed, tried to form words but nothing came out. I felt us lowering and then we were sitting on the floor. I straddled his hip and sat on him, never letting go, holding on to him as if my life depended on it because my life _did_ depend on it. It was like all the pain I’d felt for his absence had accumulated inside me all this long and now was allowed out.

I cried for having lost him after having him for such a short time. I cried because of all I’d gone through all this time. I cried for Jack, for Daryl never being able to meet Jack, for him not being there when it happened, for what Daryl would feel now mourning him. For the dad he wouldn’t be.

Daryl was rocking me slowly and firmly, holding me in his lap and in his arms with all he was, his strength all around me, his tears on my skin. One of his arms rose from my back to my head and held me there against him, his hand on my scalp.

Slowly, my sobs started to calm down but still, I clung to him. Nothing in the world would remove me from this spot, not ever. When I could speak again, I took a deep, shuddering breath.

“We lost the baby…” my voice came in a painful whisper.

“I know”, he squeezed me harder.

My immobilized shoulder that was trapped between us, hurting all this time but being thoroughly ignored, hurt even more and I tried moving it without letting go of him, but he did, worried. He kept one hand still on my head but pulling away from me a little, the other hand resting softly on my injured shoulder. We looked at each other then, from real close. His eyes were red and puffy and tears were still rolling from them, and there was a small cut on his cheek. I must have been a terrible sight, swollen eye, purple nose, tears and snot all over, but he looked at me in awe, like I was the most perfect sight a man could have.

His face scrunched then, eyes closing tight as if in pain, and he lowered his head, resting his forehead on my chest. I held his head against me and kissed his hair.

“Shoulda been there with you…”

I couldn’t answer because I could never tell him it was alright, because it wasn’t. He should have been there with me, if he was there everything all those past months would have been different and maybe Jack would even be alive. I couldn’t tell him that, though, it would only add to his pain. So o just reached for his face and made him look at me. I wasn’t sobbing anymore but the tears still fell and my chin was trembling like crazy.

“You with me now,” I told him as I nodded, to affirm this even harder, “We’re okay now. We’ll be okay.”

His lips trembling, he nodded and placed is both hands on the sides of my face, now paying deep attention to all details. His eyes roamed over my bruises, my lip, back to my eyes and then to my hair. I laughed knowing what he was thinking. Last time he’d seen me I had a headful of dreads and now I had the sides shaved and the top short.

“Long story,” I told him. “Yours is different too.”

He lowered his head a little, “It’s been months…”

“Eight. Nearly eight months,” I told him. “I never stopped counting.”

He bit his lip then, nervously trying not to start crying again and looked at me, “Bastard hurt ya…”

“I don’t care… I killed him.”

“And then ya almost died on me again.”

He pushed me a bit away from him then, but never let me go, his hands resting on my hips like he couldn’t stop touching me.

“I had to do it, Daryl.”

“If ya’d died now… I can’t make it again, Sam. I won’t make it if I feel that again.”

I started crying again, “I’m sorry… I’m so sorry this all happened… That you had to go through it, ‘cause it hurt so fuckin’ much being away from you when I knew you were _alive_ , I can’t imagine how it’d be if I thought you dead…”

“It ain’t your fault,” he said shaking his head, crying with me as he held my face in his hands, fingertips touching every inch of it, “you didn’t deserve this, it ain’t your fault, baby...”

I couldn’t express anymore with words. I didn’t even know what I was saying anymore, words were failing me, so I put all my love for him, all the pain and all the happiness of this moment in a kiss. I pressed his head against mine with my hand as he kept holding my face and kissed me back just as strongly, our lips still closed as we cried even as we kissed. He slid kiss after kiss from my lips to my face, sliding over the tears until he found my neck again, hugging me tight once more.

There were voices outside then, I couldn’t understand any words but they seemed to be right there on the other side of the sheet, and Daryl heard them too because he tensed up a bit as if he’d just woken up from a high, and we looked at each other again. He raised his hands to my face once more to start drying my tears, being careful with my nose and bruised eye.

“Is my nose fixed?” I asked in a small voice

He smiled, looking at my eyes. “Yeah, Hershel put it back. Looked like an S.”

I laughed too, tearful. “Not how I wanted to look when you first saw me again.”

Smiling, he told me “I don’t give it a shit how you look ’s long as you’re here and alive.”

The voices caught our attention then and we both looked at the sheet like it was the only thing separating us from reality right now as if this infirmary was the whole world and it was just us. I looked back at him.

“Who have we lost?”

This question sobered him up a little and he dried his own face. As he did, I got up from him, but I couldn’t do it well because of my thigh and I had only one arm to help me up, so Daryl ended up pulling me to my feet.

“Daryl… Who am I not gonna see out there?” I repeated, getting clearly that he'd avoided answering it.

“That night at the farm…” he started, looking down at where our hands were entwined. “Was _you…_ And Patricia and Beth’s boyfriend… And Dale.”

Fuck, like a slap. It was four dead that night – except that it was three, of course.

 _Shit, Dale_ … Andrea would feel that.

“And Andrea disappeared,” he continued.

“I found her like two days after that,” I told him. “You saw her at the Village?”

“Yeah, we saw her. We didn’t know if she’d made it.”

I nodded. “Who else?”

“Then there was all the months on the road… And just a few days ago we found the prison and cleared it. There were inmates inside, a couple of ‘em were good people, the others… Sonofabitch let walkers in to get to us.”

“Oh no… Damn, who?”

“T-Dog.”

I lowered my head, “Fuck…”

“Carol went missing the same day. Only found her yesterday, she’d hid in a solitary. We’d thought she was gone too, but I found her. And Hershel got bit in the leg and we had to cut if off. And…”

He stopped and I looked at him, reaching his eyes to make him look at me. The last pieces of info about Carol and Hershel still taking a moment to register.

“Who else?”

“Lori went into labor,” he started and shit. Shit, shit, I knew, he didn’t even have to say it. “Didn’t work… Needed a C-section, Maggie did it.”

I shook my head, looking down. I had no hopes Lori had survived a C-section.

“Who did it? Who ended her?”

He looked at me, mourning in his eyes. “Carl did it.”

“Fuck!” I brought my hand to my own face. “Shit, that’s fucked up… And the baby?”

Daryl’s eyes softened a bit at it and there was the tiniest smile on his lips.

“A girl. She’s fine.”

I was crying again, a confusion of grief for the people I’d just learned we lost and joy for knowing the baby was fine. One of our babies had been fine, after all.

“Did you lose people too?” he asked me.

“No. I just gathered people. Found Andrea, then Michonne who was my friend at high school, and then –”

“That’s why she looks familiar!” he interrupted me.

“You remember her?”

“Saw her a couple times ‘round your house.”

I smiled, “Yeah, I guess so. She didn’t go there much but you may’ve seen her,” and I moved on, “So there was Michonne, and then Merle, yeah, I found him too, which is a whole story with the Governor… After Merle, I found Morales and Miranda. You saw them there too?”

“Yeah… You got everyone back together.”

“By accident, but yeah, I did.”

“Ain’t no accident. It’s you… You a fighter, you don’t give up and people need that.”

I smiled but it was sadly, and I looked down again, leaning forward to rest my forehead on his chest like he’d done to me before, “All along I just wanted to have you with me…”

“Me too…”

From the other side of the sheet, we heard the old man’s voice of Hershel stop us from continuing.

“It’s time I check the patient, Daryl, if you don’t mind.”

We laughed a bit awkwardly and dried our faces. Daryl stepped away and faced the door, remaining by my side and said, “Come in.”

Hershel pulled the sheet and put his head inside before entering, smiling at me. He looked older, like years had passed between the farm and now, and he was limping using crutches under his armpits, walking with just one leg. I looked down at it and then back at him, who was still smiling at me.

“Hi, Mr. Greene!” I smiled at him and he accepted my one-armed hug.

“It’s good to see you, Sam!”

“Oh, I’ll say!” I laughed as I let go of him, looked down at his leg and then looked at Daryl, “So when you said you had to cut off Hershel’s leg, you really meant that you cut off his leg!”

Daryl nodded with a little smile, finding my surprise funny, and Mr. Greene answered, “They had the mind to cut it off quickly enough for the infection not to spread. They saved my life.”

“And you, apparently, saved mine,” I told him. “Was it too bad?”

He gestured me to sit on the bed and I did as Daryl pulled an old chair from the corner for him to sit facing me, “It was, the bullet grazed the artery and you were bleeding out. I was able to remove the bullet, stop the bleeding and close it, but you’d take too long to recover from the blood loss. See this?” he reached for my arm and showed me the needle marks. “You needed donation. Otherwise, you probably wouldn’t make it.”

“I got a transfusion?” I asked looking from him to Daryl. He nodded, and I looked back at Hershel. “Who gave it to me?”

“Sasha did,” Mr. Greene answered.

“New girl,” Daryl explained. “Got here yesterday while we were out.”

“She didn’t even know me,” I was awed.

“Nobody who knew their blood types had O-neg. Seeing she was the only one with the right type, she stepped up,” Hershel explained as the started overseeing the wound on my leg – there was a whole on my jeans, leaving the bandage showing. He removed one side of it to peek under it. “She’d been starved and very weak, so she’s still resting right next door. She’ll be fine, though.”

“I’ll talk to her later, then…”

“How are you feeling, my dear?” he asked looking at me again after replacing the bandage, apparently satisfied by what he saw under there.

“Uh… Sore all over, felt weak when I woke up but… I’m alright.”

“You’ll need lots of fluids, nutrition and plenty of rest for at least a weak,” my doctor said and I saw Daryl reach out for a plastic bottle of water from the side of the bed and hand it to me. I took it, looking at him with a thankful smile and opened it, drinking immediately. I’d been thirsty to death. “Your leg will be a problem for a while until the muscle tissue recovers, so you’ll have to exercise after the wound closes. For now, you just need some rest and you’ll be as good as new.”

I smiled at him, “Well, that’s the hard part ain’t it?

He smiled back at me and patted my knee, “Well, try your best, won’t you? You’re discharged.”

Daryl helped him get up and to position his crutches, and he left the cell first, followed by me and Daryl right behind me. I had a feeling that's where he was going to stay now, right there near me, and that was exactly what I wanted.

He was my man and he belonged there.

I smiled looking around. We were at a block where all the cells they’d been living in were. There, where a staircase led to the upper floor with more cells, they were all gathered. They’d been waiting for me.

Michonne was the nearest and the first to come forward. It was so good to see her here with people from my original group. Her being here was like me having the two groups conjoined, one group now. We hugged, asked each other how we were doing, I thanked her for going there and leading the others to the Village and to my rescue.

“You found them,” I whispered as I hugged her.

“Are you happy?” she asked me and, with a huge start, I realized my answer was _yes_. And that hadn’t happened in a very, very long time.

“I am,” I told her as we let go.

“Good,” she smiled, let go of my arm and stepped to the side, giving space for Andrea to show up right in front of me.

“Oh! What’re you doing here?” I asked surprised as we hugged.

“Mich radioed me when they brought you here and I wanted to come. You okay?”

I laughed and we let go, “Oh, I’m _so_ okay! You good?”

“I’m fine, and they are all fine. Nobody shot or anything, ‘cept you.”

It pained me to ask because I was afraid of the answer, but I had to know, “And Honey?”

“She’s fine!” Andrea told me with a smile and my heart lifted. “It was just a graze; Miranda took care of her. When I left she was already jumping around, just limping a little.”

“Oh, thank god!” I said with a hand on my heart.

Then she moved to the side like Michonne had done, as she said “Honey is a dog, for those of you who didn’t understand.”

I took a look at my other side, and a little behind, just to make sure Daryl was still there, and I wasn’t disappointed. He had leaned against a column, eyes on me, observant and his solid presence _right there_. The strength he gave me was unbelievable.

Rick came then and he looked nervous. Even though we’d seen each other before, talked to each other, fought together, it was different to be standing right here. He was the man who’d wanted to be a leader since the beginning and I didn’t allow. He was never as crazy about it as Shane had been, but he’d wanted my position, and now he apparently had it.

He looked emotional and guilty, his eyes a bit too wide and without blinking. And I remembered he had just lost his wife at childbirth, so I knew his emotions had to be a turmoil inside him.

“Hey there, Sheriff,” I told him with a little smile just to calm him down, and it worked. He came in for a hug then, careful and afraid.

“I’m sorry, Sam,” was the first thing he did. “I am so sorry…”

“Hey,” I said letting go of him and looking at his face. “Sorry for what?”

“I should’ve known that you were not dead,” he shook his head, looking down, hands on his hips.

“It would have been great… If you’d known. But you didn’t and I don’t think you’d’ve left me there if for a moment you thought I was alive.”

He looked at me. “No, no, never. We’d have found a way to take you out of that herd.”

“I know,” I said nodding. “You did nothing wrong, Rick, you actually saved my life. Andrea told me you were the one who shot him? Made him stop?” and he nodded, many emotions in his eyes. “Seconds more and I’d be really dead. You stopped him before I could die. You just didn’t know that.”

He was nodding, a tear falling from his eye, and he just pulled me to another quick hug. “Thank you…” he said. “I am really glad you’re alive.”

I said nothing more, let go of the hug and just smiled up at him. He turned his back then, mingling with the others in silence as Carol came next, smiling sweetly, arms open to pull me to a hug. I was smiling too when she reached me.

“Damn, Carol,” I sad as I wrapped my arm around her shoulders. “You look so good!”

She laughed a little, “You have to idea how good it is to see you!”

“Are you okay?” I asked her.

“I am. And I gotta tell you,” she let go and looked at me. “Things I told you at the RV that day at the farm?” I nodded, remembering she had promised me she was going to follow me, she’d be by my side. Carol looked quickly at Daryl too and then back at me, “It’s all still true. Okay?”

Damn, don’t make me cry again. Although I don’t think I’d actually stopped. I pulled her to a hug again, wordless, but I know she understood how much I appreciated her telling me that.

Then I saw the young ones. Beth was sitting in the stairs holding the baby and Carl was standing in front of her, both looking at me. I smiled at Carl with his sheriff’s hat, looking a bit grown, still a child but not so small as I remembered. Beth had a calm smile and it was good to see her, but she and I had never got too close during my short time at the farm. And in her arms…

My eyes fixed on the little blonde hair-covered head. And I froze.

Beth handed the baby to Carl, who looked a bit confused but said nothing as Beth got up and came to greet me. I hugged her back, exchanged few words – she also looked older, like her eyes were wiser or something, but she was still a seventeen-year-old kid. I could feel everybody’s eyes on me as I looked again at the baby in Carl’s arms. My throat got tight and it hurt and I had to look away. I didn’t know what was happening to me, I just couldn’t keep my eyes on her. It got physically impossible. So I turned my head, looking around, seeing people were mostly quiet, uncomfortable and confused as to what was gonna happen now, and I also caught pity in some of their eyes because they probably already knew about Jack.

I couldn’t deal with this right now. I turned away to find where Michonne and Andrea were standing together, talking quietly, and moved to them, looking over my shoulder to find Daryl. He was looking at me with concerned eyes, he’d caught my distress in seeing the baby.

“Merle’s back at the Village?” I asked them, aware the whole group was listening.

“Yeah, he’s taking care of it,” Michonne answered. “Are you okay?” she said and explained her question by looking quickly at the baby and back at me.

“I’m – I don’t know. I can’t –” I stopped and breathed, my thigh hurting more now from standing and I swayed a bit. “I can’t think about this now, I think I need to sit down.”

Daryl was by my side so fast it was like he’d been there all the time, an arm circling my waist to ground me. Damn, that worked. He helped me walk out of that corridor to an outer area where there was a metal cafeteria table and helped me sit there. Everyone else followed.

“Glenn and Maggie?” I asked to nobody specific.

“Resting. They’re fine,” Daryl informed me from where he stood near where I was sitting.

“They’re a bit shaken, but they’ll be fine,” Rick answered as he sat nearby and Beth handed me a metal cup of water. “I head you knew about the prison before?” I nodded. “You never thought it’d be a good place to take?”

“We only found it after we settled in the Village, and it was overrun. We knew it was a good place to loot, pro’ly find valuable stuff inside, but we had lots of work to do at the Village all those months. Kept postponing it.”

We all talked for a while, Michonne telling me and the others all that happened that day when she left the Village to go take a look at the prison but ended up in Woodbury instead. I still hadn’t known how she’d found my original group. Then people asked where the Village was, how it was and I could see their excitement growing at every little thing the three of us told them about it. Private houses for everyone, running water, solar panels, space to grow? It did seem a bit utopic, but we knew it was real. It was our home.

“And speaking of…” I said after a long while talking. “We need to go home.”

Daryl moved uncomfortably where he was standing. Shit, this must be hard for him. He lived there, at the prison, he was part of this group, had his own place within them, and now I was here. I was disrupting a routine he had settle with them for all those months without me.

I looked up at him from where I was sitting as Carol asked, “You’re going already?”

“I have to,” I said still looking at Daryl and then looked at Carol and the others. “The place was attacked just yesterday. There’s work to do.”

“You can’t forget you’re supposed to rest,” Hershel tried to remind me. “You lost blood, your leg and shoulder are wounded. You need to recover.”

“And she will,” Andrea said. “We’ll make sure of it if we have to bound her to bed.”

I laughed a little, “Yeah, you can try,” and I started to get up and found Daryl’s eyes. As walked slowly to him, the others understood and started to get away a little, their own conversations starting. Daryl took me to a corner where we could talk alone.

“You really going?” he asked me in a low voice.

“Come with me,” I asked and reached for his hand. Oh, his hands… I’d missed them so much. I looked down at our hands together, mine nearly disappearing on his. “Please, come home with me?”

“I will,” he answered in a grave whisper, no need to think about it. “Ain’t leaving your side if I can help it.”

I smiled, “Good. I don’t wanna sleep alone not one more night.”

He lowered his head with a shy smile, “Ya hurt…” and he found my eyes, “Convalescing.”

I laughed, squeezing his hand, “So much I can still do when convalescing!”

“I’ll be happy to just have you sleeping by my side.”

My man, my adorable Daryl… I entered his arms them, my head resting sideways on his chest, his arms enveloping me. I could feel his heartbeat and his breath and this was the most perfect place in the entire world. It still felt like a dream to be here again…

“Hey,” he called my attention. “There’s blood girl.”

I looked to where he was pointing and saw two new people entering the room, looking around embarrassed and a little on edge. The girl seemed tired and a bit pale, the man by her side helping her walk. They stopped right there, at the entrance, everyone looking at them. I saw Rick take a few steps closer to them, put his hands on his hips and stare at them.

“Rick hasn’t talked to them yet?” I asked Daryl.

“Not yet. Things were kinda crazy here when we got here.”

I looked up at him for a second and turned away, limping my way to meet them. The girl recognized, she did give me blood after all. I reached out a hand to her, “I’m Sam.”

“Sasha,” she said nervously shaking my hand.

“Thank you, Sasha. For all the blood and stuff.”

She smiled, “You’re welcome,” and she looked at the man by her side. “This is my brother Tyreese.”

I shook his hand too as Rick approached.

“How’d you get in?” he asked.

“Wall’s down on the other side of the prison. A fire or something,” Tyreese explained.

“That side is completely overrun by walkers. How did you get this far?”

“They were lost in the gyms,” it was Carl who answered. I had taken a step back already, know this was not my business.

“You brought’em here?” Rick asked his son angrily.

“He had no choice,” Hershel explained, defending the boy.

Man, Rick was not fine. Not fine at all. He was tense, grieving, his eyes a bit maddened. So completely different from the Rick I’d known all those months ago.

“Hershel said you can use some extra hands,” Tyreese continued. “We’re no strangers to hard work. We can go out and get our own food, stay out of your hair.”

Rick looked at him for a moment and then shook his head, looked down and back at the man. “No,” he said simply.

“Please…” Sasha said. “People just keep dying out there. It’s just us now.”

“No,” he said firmly again.

Well, alright then.

“Hey,” I said and all the heads turned to me, theatrically. “Don’t worry. You’re with me. I got a place.”

I could see relief flood Sasha’s face immediately but Tyreese asked, “You don’t live here?”

I shook my head. “No, somewhere else, a few miles away. You’ll come with me, both of you.”

“You don’t know them,” Rick told me, disbelieving I had accepted them.

“Rick, she gave me blood when she didn’t even know me. If you’d said yes, I’d be fighting you for them!”


	45. Day 311, part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for your comments!
> 
> Sam and Dary have been keeping me sane in these awful days, and so are your comments. They mean more to me than you can imagine!
> 
> I am very happy you are enjoying this story. It's being cooked up for years in my head. And as English is not my first language, I'm really happy it's pleasing the readers! Thank you!
> 
> And now... If SMUT Is what you want, then SMUT if what you'll get!

I was already outside, ready to leave with Daryl, Michonne, Andrea, Sasha, and Tyrese, others still around, when Rick approached again. He had gone away when we all started to prepare to leave and now he returned. He seemed a bit calmer, a little more normal.

“You’re leaving?” he asked Daryl

Daryl nodded, his hands gripping the strap of the crossbow handing on his back. “You didn’t think I’d _not_ go, did ya?”

Rick nodded, looking away and rested his hands on his hips. “I figured. But you know this group needs you, Daryl. We all need you home for protection.”

I said nothing, just watched as Daryl got uncomfortable, thoughtful for a moment before answering, “I’ll come back. We’ll talk.”

“Yeah…” Rick said slowly, dragging the word, and looked at me. “We all need a real good talk.”

“What?” I asked. “I don’t got a lot to talk about, it’s all pretty simple. If it was up to me, you’d all be packing already and moving _today_ to the Village. The offer’s there.”

They all heard. Rick looked around at the others, nodded and started to walk away. “We’ll talk!” he said over his shoulders.

“Shit…” I said watching him go.

“What?” Daryl asked turning to me.

“I’m gonna face the whole _I got the balls, I’m in charge_ thing all over again, ain’t I?”

“Pro’ly. But ya ain’t getting killed for it this time.”

We were six people crowded inside a car but I was safe and cozy in Daryl’s arms as I sat on his thighs and rested my head on his shoulder. He held me tight there, firm and warm, and real. There, in my life again. I closed my eyes, breathed in deeply, smelling his earthy, sweaty smell, and let myself relax. I dozed off in his arms, I was really damn tired, and woke up when Andrea, who was driving, slowed down in front of the gate. Looking through the window, I saw Merle over the wall on the platform, and then he disappeared as he went down. Seconds later the gate was slid to the side and we entered.

“Wanna go straight home?” Andrea asked me.

“No, let’s hop off here. I wanna see everyone.”

Damn, it was good to be home. Sasha and Tyrese were looking around in awe, eyeing the visible houses there, the street that elongated to the square and at the people around. Everyone was coming but nobody was as excited and happy as Honey. As she ran even as she limped, a bandage on her hind leg nearly falling off from her moving so much, I saw Michonne and Andrea started walking away with Sasha and Tyrese, knowing it would be too much for me to handle if I had to introduce and settled them in now.

Honey ran towards me from the end of the street, barking, and whining. By my side, Daryl got a little startled because anyone who didn’t know Honey would think she was dangerous, but seeing me smile so happy to see she was alive and knelt on the asphalt to receive her, he knew she wasn’t. Not a delicate dog, of course, she was huge and nearly knocked me down and Merle came over to try and contain her but was not very successful. After a moment of it, when my thigh and shoulder did not enjoy all the attention, I reached out for Daryl to help me get up and then I whistled at her. She stopped and sat by my side, but could barely stay still, her tail wagging like crazy, face looking perfectly like a smile.

“There you go, that’s a good girl. I’m happy to see you too, Honey,” I said as I patted her head, a bit breathless.

Daryl came over to pet her too and Honey smelled and licked his hand, “She got shot?”

“Yep, sonofabitch shot her. She attacked him to protect me, right before you all got here.”

“Good dog,” he told her and made my smile widen even more.

“I know the dog’s the most important one,” Merle said, laughter in his voice. “But will ya give your friends some attention now?”

“Oh, come on, Merle, you know you’re _almost_ as important as she is.”

Telling me to go fuck myself, Merle hugged me, lifting me from the ground, and I laughed. When he let me go, though, he was serious, “If I’d known you’d pull that crap I’d tie ya up and carry ya back home over my shoulder.”

“Fuck you’re talkin’ about?”

“Going back in there to get him!”

“I had to do it! It had to be over!”

“Nearly got yerself killed!”

I looked at Daryl because he’d said the exact same thing and saw him with his arms crossed, nodding along with his brother. I was pissed but I smiled.

“Good to see you guys agreeing on something,” I said, going back to our early days. I looked back at Merle, “It’s over now because I took that risk!”

“Woodbury’s still standin’, Sammy –”

“Don’t fuckin –”

“His minions still out there, they can let it go or not, can’t take a chance on that,” he said stunning me in place as he started walking back. “Gonna double up watch-outs for now, just in case.”

He turned and went back to the platform.

“Hey,” I turned to see Mikki calling me just as Morales reached to shake Daryl’s hand. “He’s pissed but he’s happy you’re home. We all are.”

“I am too, you have no idea,” I said hugging her with my good arm. “Thank you, Mikki. Yesterday –”

“Don’t thank me. This is family, it’s what we do.”

Letting go, I asked her “Will’s doing rounds?”

“Yeah, Merle put him and David on rounds.”

“Good… Hey Mo,”

“Sammy,” he said and I laughed,

“Don’t you even!”

He laughed too and hugged me quickly. As he let go I looked at the office. The porch was totally down. “What’s the damage?” I asked him.

“Uh, I’m studying it. I think I’ll try to salvage the wood and whatever else I can, but the structure’s no good. We’ll have to put it down.”

“It’s fine, we’ll choose another house, a small one. It this is all the damage we got, we’re good.”

“We’re good then,” Morales agreed.

“The others? Miranda had Ma and Emma, right?”

“They’re all fine, though Miranda will want to take a look at you, I’m sure.”

I breathed out tiredly, “Later… I just wanna go home now.”

“Go,” Mikki said. “Rest all you need. We got it.”

I was gonna get emotional again if I thought too much about all the support and the fact that she had called us _family_ , so I had to go now. Daryl and I took one of the cars to go home, the walk there would be too much on my leg. He tossed his crossbow on the back seat before we drove slowly. I showed him everything on our way there.

“This is Merle’s and across the street it’s where Mikki and her brother Will live with Ma.”

“Who’s Ma?”

“Their mother, she’s elder… Been getting weak, she’ll leave us soon, we all know it,” and I pointed at the next house. “Here on the corner it’s Andrea’s, Michonne lives on the next one turning the corner, and on this side it’s the Morales’. Turn left here,” I instructed as we nearly stopped at the corner. “This one here,” I pointed to the house right in front of us, “is the infirmary, Miranda runs it. This is the storage, we been keeping stuff we find in there, the weapons too.”

We rounded Circle Street nearly until the other side of it as he told me, “It’s a good place you got here.”

“It is,” I agreed nodding. “It’s just what I had in mind, there’s space for everyone. I always thought of it as a place for everyone, all of the others. There will be enough houses. To, you know… Not just hole up. To really live in.”

He was thoughtful at that and said nothing, just nodding a little.

“This is it,” I said as we approached my house, the farthest occupied one, and he stopped in front of it, bending a little to look at the house across from me. I looked at him with a smile. “Welcome home.”

We just looked at each other for a long moment. He reached out for my hand, engulfing mine in his, and gave me a little smile. “I’ve been home all day.”

_Oh, my heart…_

He squeezed my hand a little, let go, opened his door and left the car. I pulled the handle to open mine and, as I did, he was already there to help me out. I held on to his bare arm to steady myself and…

Man, it was like a wave of electricity passed between us. These arms, my god, how I’d missed them. And I’d missed feeling this too, this warmth inside my chest, the tingling just starting under my pants…

“Stop,” he said.

“What?”

“This…”

“What did I do?” I laughed looking up at him.

“I remember this look,” he said as he helped me start to walk to the house. “You’re hurt, gotta rest.”

“Well, you can’t blame me, can ya?”

He looked quickly at me and then at the path again, with a little sideways smile as he said, “Nah…”

I just laughed. We’d both felt that, I knew it.

Honey was lying on the porch already when we got there and he helped me climb the four steps. She was calmer and remained where she was, only raising her head to look at us, wagging her tail, tongue coming out in a goofy smile.

Daryl mumbled a “Good girl,” as he saw her. “What’s her story?”

I opened the door and he guided me in first. “She was lost in a town nearby, warned us about a herd and jumped into my car to escape them. We had to leave so I drove away with her inside. Guess she kinda chose me.”

Daryl closed the door behind him as he entered and looked around. We were standing in the living room, which shared the same space with the kitchen and a dining table. I turned on the light switch, it was getting dark already. He squinted a bit at the artificial light.

“You got power?” he asked, impressed.

“Solar, yeah,” and I turned to look the house over. “This is it. Simple but home.”

“It’s perfect.”

I turned to him again. “It was good, but not perfect. It is now,” I took a step towards him and stopped at his chest, looking up at his eyes, “’cause now you’re here.”

Eyes on mine, Daryl rose a hand to my face and held my hip with the other, thumb caressing my cheek.

“This means I’m moving in?” he asked just what I’d asked him once when I went to sleep in his tent at the farm.

I smiled and also reminisced our early days, “Yeah… I ain’t ready to have you out of my sight.”

I had a hand on his chest when he leaned down to kiss me. Softly, slowly, his hand on my face holding me against him. I sighed on his lips and he deepened it, his lips opening over mine, encouraging me to do the same. I felt his intake of breath when our tongues touched, my arm sliding from his chest to circle his neck.

It was like breathing again.

Like water when dying of thirst.

Like a dried-out body lying in a warm bath.

He kissed me slowly and firmly, feeling everything he could, pulling me tightly against him, his head turning to the side to envelope me in his kiss. I melted. I let go, just relaxed in his kiss, feeling my chest warm, my heart pounding, and safe, so safe and so light on my feet.

He let go but kept his lips roaming over mine as he whispered, “You still want me? Like this?”

“I want you more than ever,” I whispered back and kissed him again.

It was harder his time. His arm slid from my hip to round around my whole back, his other hand in my head holding me to him. I had my only free hand sliding over his head, neck, chest, his face, and _damn_ I hated these bandages! He got hard against my stomach, I could feel it through our clothes and I felt a throb inside my own at the feeling.

Bringing both hands up to hold my face, he let go and rested his forehead on mine, breathless.

“Fuck, I can’t believe this is real,” he kissed me strongly again and continued, “I gotta be trippin’ or something…”

“This feels like trippin?” I asked ad I lowered my hand and strongly grabbed his hard cock. Damn, I thought I’d never feel that again...

He hissed, his hip jerking in my hand, “It does, yeah.”

“How ‘bout this?” and I bit his lower lip. Hard.

He groaned wildly, crazily turned on and kissed me again, backing me up blindly into the house. When my hip hit the kitchen counter and he pressed me against it, I felt the impact on my shoulder and the pressure on my thigh, and it hurt. I whimpered, letting go of his mouth with a hiss. This sobered him. He looked at me breathlessly, his lips parted, wet and swollen, but his eyes were concerned.

“Lemme take care of you,” he said softly, with so much tenderness that all I could do was nod, my emotions right there on the surface. “Got a shower?”

I nodded and moved there, our hands together as I pulled him with me to the small corridor that led to the bathroom and the bedroom. I caught him taking a look inside the bedroom and the double bed I had there, complete with sheets, pillows and a comforter.

I entered the bathroom. It was really small, just the shower, toilet and a small sink. We could barely fit in there together, he had to stand under the threshold. Quietly, he crouched down and untied my shoelaces, removed each of the boots as I rested a hand on his shoulder for balance, and then did the same to my socks. Then he got up and studied my bandaged shoulder. I was wearing a brown tank top and the bandages were tying my arm over it. I don’t know where this top had come from because what I remembered last was to be wearing a stinky t-shit removed from a dead man at Woodbury. I was sweaty and dirty, my skin darkened just as Daryl’s was. I kept looking at his face as he searched for the end of the bandage and slowly started rolling it off me. His beard was growing, but still sparse, and there were a few white hairs in it. I looked at the mole he had on the side of his lip, at his eyelashes and eyebrows, at his hair that was growing and nearly covering his forehead.

When the bandage was off, I looked down at my own shoulder as I unfolded my arm. My elbow complained a little at it but it was fine. The shoulder didn’t hurt without the support, but I knew I couldn’t move it too much, it was still sore. The skin there was bruised a light purple. Daryl reached for the hem of my top and started to pull it up, but stopped and looked at me, asking for permission. I raised the good arm in answer and he pulled it up and over my head, then slid it down my injured shoulder and let it fall to the floor.

I’d been bare under it and Daryl stood there staring at me for a long moment. Slowly, he raised a hand and touched my throat, his fingertips soft on my skin as he glided them down to my chest, slowly between my breasts, tracing the tattoo and down.

When he reached my stomach something burst inside me and I started to quietly cry. Last time he’s touched me there, I’d still been pregnant and he was caressing me and our baby. I felt so sad he wasn’t here with us, and I was so overwhelmed and exhausted from everything that had happened these past two days, and now I was being taken care of like only Daryl could, like I unconsciously didn’t allow anybody else to do.

Daryl caressed my cheek, trying to dry my tears but they kept falling. Still quiet, he reached form my jeans and started to undo the button and zipper, and I could see he was emotional too, his eyes shining with tears. He slid my jeans down and pulled my underwear with them, I lifted one leg and then another for him to take them off. He tossed them behind him in the corridor and reached for the dressing on my right thigh. He carefully removed the sticky parts from my skin and took it off. I’d need to get a new bandage later.

He got up after carefully looking over the bullet wound, and he moved to go turn on the shower. I reached my good arm to stop him, though, and looked at me a bit confused, but said nothing as I reached to start unbutton his sleeveless, dirty beige shirt. It was hard because I was doing it with only one hand, so he finished it himself. I slid hand over his bare chest to his shoulder and slid the shirt off, him shrugging it off to help. I wanted to undress him myself, unwrap him like a gift at Christmas, but he needed to help me do it. He was dirty all over and had the smell I had gotten used to, but then again, so was I. I turned on the shower as he finished undressing and turned to look at him. He was leaner and more muscular than before, and there were a few small scars up his legs, from his time on the road.

He came to me and made me walk backwards into the shower stall and right under the spray. The first hit of the hot water had me flinching a little, but I closed my eyes and lifted my head to feel the water hitting my face. It felt incredible. I heard him close the glass shower door and I knew he was in there with me even with my eyes closed. Still just feeling the water, I reached out to find him standing real close, and I pulled him with me to a hug under the spay.

He groaned. It must have been a long, long time since he’d had a hot shower, the prison most certainly didn’t have a heater. I opened my eyes to see him with his head up, the water hitting his face. He let go of my waist to rub his face with his hands. My god, it was beautiful. I leaned against the wall and just looked up at him, watching him in awe, my heart bursting. I smiled with tears rolling down my face.

After a long moment of just feeling it, Daryl reached for the soap started thoroughly washing me. His hands slid all over my body, cleaning every little smudge I had and even though he was not being sexual about it I was moaning and ready for him. I wanted him now, I couldn’t wait anymore. Breathless, I reached for him, my hand sliding from his chest to stomach. He took a deep breath before I could reach him and stopped my hand, even though his cock was so hard it looked painful. At my questioning look, he got even closer to me, lips brushing mine.

“I ain’t done with you yet, sweetheart.”

Damn, I was melted, a puddle on the floor. My left leg was tired because I was resting all my weight in it but it was the only little bad thing I was feeling; everything else was perfect. Daryl kissed me again, hands sliding down my body, kisses spreading to my neck as he held and massaged my breasts.

“Oh my god… Daryl…” I moaned feeling his tongue on my neck, licking the water there, and I was overwhelmed again, my chest was exploding and I was throbbing for him.

“I wanna make you feel good baby…”

“It’s been so long since I’ve been touched. Haven’t even touched myself…”

So he did. His mouth lowering to my nipple and his hand reaching between my legs at the same time, I nearly burst. I cried out loud, my hips bucking as I grabbed his head against me. I didn’t take me long to go over the edge. His fingers were inside me, his thumb massaging my clit and sucked on my nipples, making me see all white for long seconds, my body thrashing as he held me up, keeping me standing even as my knees buckled. I kept on crying, so filled with joy and love and completely overcome. I grabbed him strongly against me, burying my face in his chest, moving even the bad shoulder to hug him with both arms, and I sobbed even as I still moaned the after waves of the most perfect orgasm.

“It’s okay, baby, I got you. I got you now, let it out…”

I realized that, as I cried and clung to him, I had both my hands sprawled on his back and he hadn’t made me stop touching him there this time. I slid them up and down, feeling his skin under my palm, the raised scars I was touching for the first time. I kissed his chest and looked up at him, the water falling over our bodies.

“I love you, Daryl… I love you so much…”

He held my face in his hand, emotion in his voice, his chin trembling as he said, “I love you too, baby…”

“This is it, right? We’re it?”

“We’re it. Forever if you’ll have me.”

I smiled even as I cried, “I will. Forever.”

We kissed again, sealing it, slowly and hot, his erection against my stomach. I reached for the soap and started washing him as he had done to me, the soapy water that came from his skin running beige and disappearing into the drain. I motioned him to turn around so I could wash his back and he didn’t hesitate. He turned to face the wall and I ran the soap on his broad back and he allowed me to touch and see the scars he had been scared to before.

When he was clean, I hugged him from behind, my breasts pressed to his back, and reached down for him, washing his groin and balls with my soapy hand. He groaned as he raised his head to feel the water falling upon his face and just felt it. With my arms circling him, I held his erection in my hand and moved up and down, the other hand holding and fondling his balls.

He hissed and moaned aloud “Oh, fuck, Sam…” and I was turned on all over again by that sound and the feeling of him in my hands.

“Yeah love, just feel it… Just feel it, babe…” I kept saying against his back as I kissed and licked his skin. I was crazily turned on and so happy he was allowing me there at his back, trusting me deeply. This meant so much when it came to Daryl…

He was breathing hard, moaning under his breath and groaning at the most pleasurable movements I made. The water was falling on us and it started losing heat. I had never had the shower on for that long, the house was probably running out of energy, but it didn’t matter. The water could go freezing and I wouldn’t remove my hands from Daryl’s body.

“I wanna be inside you,” he said as he held my wrist on him and turned around on the circle of my arms. “Please Sam, lemme inside you…” he begged as he grabbed my ass with both hands and pulled me against him as he buried his face on my neck.

“Yes, fuck yes… Let’s go to bed.”

The water was cold by now anyway, so it was better we left the shower. He turned it off and we left, ignoring completely that our bodies and hair were dripping. I just needed him inside me. I just needed his body over me. I just needed him.

He lowered me to bed carefully, still worried about my wounds when I was completely ignoring them, and I pulled him over me, opening my legs and my whole self to him, and as he lowered himself to me and entered me slowly, inch by inch until he filled me deeply, and I felt whole again, complete. Daryl rested on his elbows and held my face in his hands, his weight on me and I shivered and he groaned with his eyes fixed on me. I held him strongly by his back, my legs tightly gripping his body against me.

Again, tears fell down my face but I was smiling up at him and as he slid out and then in again. He moaned deeply and I laughed in so much joy, a joy I hadn’t felt for such a long time and I’d thought I’d never feel again.

“Oh god fuck, you’re in me, Daryl, you’re inside me again!”

“Fuck, I never thought… Couldn’t even dream of it… Thought I’d never again…”

And with all the awed and disbelieving cries, he fucked me. Damn, he fucked me good as he held my left thigh up carefully for it not to move too much, but he was the only one thinking about it. I didn’t care if the wound was hurting a bit, I didn’t care if the stitches opened, I cared about absolutely nothing now, because I had found him. What I’d dreamed about and hoped for, then given up, then wanted with all my heart again, the thing that had kept me going for so long; I had it. I had him on top of me, I had him inside me, moaning and groaning as he took his pleasure from me and gave me just as much back. I was cuming to his delicious thrusts, his cock at the perfect angle hitting all the perfect spots.

He watched me cum, eyes on me, mouth gapped, telling me how good it felt, telling me to cum all over him, and then he rose to rest his weight in his hand, still holding my thigh carefully with the other, and kept on fucking me hard until he closed his eyes and looked up to the heavens to shout his orgasm, burying himself inside me over and over.

He let himself fall over me, his head on my chest as he tried to catch his breath. I still hadn’t mine. We stayed like that for a while, breathing each other in. He rubbed his face against me, by chest and breasts, and I ran my hand on his damp hair and his back, all I could reach.

After a while he knelt between my legs, sliding off me, and held my leg looking at the wound, lightly touching the stitches with his fingertips.

“You okay?” he asked, still a bit breathless.

“I am…”

“The shoulder?”

“It’s fine,” and it was true, I hadn’t even felt it all along. “Come back here,” I said opening my arms for him.

He laid down again, now a bit to the side but still pretty much on top of me, pillowing my head with one arm and resting his hand on my ribcage, and we kissed again. For a long time, slowly and deeply, going from deep and hot, to delicate pecks on lips, face, and neck. I don’t even know how long we stayed just like this, just holding and feeling each other. Our hearts and our breaths were normal again when we got distracted by a loud growl. It was my stomach.

We laughed together at it and he said he was hungry too, a lot, and we decided we had to eat before letting ourselves fall asleep. I didn’t want to sleep anyway. I wanted to be with him, use the time well, talk, touch, make love again, make up for all those months apart. So with our legs shaking, we got up from the bed.


	46. Day 311, part 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's a dialogue-heavy chapter. Not easy, but a necessary conversation.
> 
> Again, thank you for reading and commenting! <3

Daryl went back to wash again in the bathroom as I picked some clean clothes to change from a drawer. I knew he had brought a bag that had been tossed into the trunk of the car and imagined he’d have at least one change of clothing there. He was too clean to put back on the dirty ones.

I was smiling when I tossed clean underwear, socks, jeans and a tank on the bed. Simply smiling unconsciously. The bed was a mess of comforter tossed to the side, the sheet escaped from the mattress and it was wet from water and fluids, and the smell in that room was pure sex. I breathed in deeply. I wanted our bedroom to smell like that all the time.

Daryl was naked and rubbing my towel over his body when he came back to the bedroom threshold. Holy shit, he was so fucking handsome and he didn’t even know it. He had a little smile when he looked me over, naked and standing there, and he looked relaxed like I’d rarely seen him in the past.

“Damn…” he said, his little smile on his face and his eyes soft. “You’re really alive.”

I stepped to him to stand really close to his chest, looking up at his face. “And you’re really _here_.”

He nodded and leaned down to kiss me, stopping just as he brushed his lips over mine. Provoking… Damn, this man was gonna kill me.

“Don’t get me started…” I whispered to him.

“We ain’t even finished yet.”

Smiling and already horny for him again, I stepped away and left to go wash in the bathroom. While I was in there, Daryl put on his dirty clothes just so he could go out to the car and get his duffel back from the trunk.

“Hey, you allow the dog in?” I heard him ask from the living room even as I was under the cold spray of the shower.

“Yeah!”

There was silence again but I heard Honey was inside, looking around. She found me in the shower and seemed satisfied it was alright. I turned it off, now clean from Daryl’s fluids that had still been oozing out of me, and was toweling myself when Daryl appeared in the corridor.

“You got a crossbow?” he asked with an impressed tone.

I had left my crossbow fallen at the wall by the gate when the Governor came and hadn’t seen it again yet. “Yeah! Did you find it?”

“It was on the porch,” he told me.

I put the towel around my body as I told him with a proud smile, “Yep. I got a crossbow.”

“And you can shoot it?” he asked impressed.

“Hell yeah!” he gave me space to pass him and enter the bedroom. “We found it in a gun store basement. Well, I mean, Mikki found it just before we arrived at the Village.”

As I got dressed and told him the story of when Merle, Michonne, Andrea and I found the place, Daryl took off the dirty, stinky clothes and put on the cleaner ones. I paused when I was going to put on the jeans, and decided to put it back in the drawer and wear sweatpants instead because of the thigh wound. Still talking, we moved to the kitchen.

“And I knew Merle can use it, even though it ain’t his choice weapon, but I didn’t want him to teach me. It was like…” I paused and got up from my leaning position in front of the open fridge, where I’d been looking for something for us to eat. “It was like learning the crossbow was something between you and me. Ya know? I was supposed to learn it from you,” and I leaned into the fridge again. It was off because we’d run out of energy but it was still cold inside. We’d had to light on oil lamps in the kitchen, the orange light dim and cozy.

“I wanted to teach you back then,” he said as he leaned against a counter and kept watching me.

“Yeah, and I wanted to learn. So I learned on my own.”

“Hm… Gonna have to see how ya doin’.”

I laughed a little, “Yeah, you’re pro’ly gonna correct a hell lotta things.”

“Shit, you gotta look hot carrying that thing…”

I closed the fridge with a metal bowl in my hand. There was the leftover of a stew I’d made from the last rabbit Merle had brought from the woods. I smiled at Daryl, an eyebrow raised, “You can bet you ass I do.”

He got me that look again, up and down and _damn_.

“Rabbit?” I offered, showing him the bowl.

“Yeah, I’m fuckin’ starvin’.”

Daryl took a seat at the table but I still didn’t join him. I opened a cabinet door and, seeing that, Honey sat looking up at me at full attention because she knew that’s where the dog food was. I filled a bowl with it and put it on the floor. Still, she didn’t move, only wagging her tail, and looked from the to the bowl and back again. I clicked my tongue and she moved instantly to eat. Only then I sat across from Daryl. There was a little curtain open and we could see the quiet street outside, the two visible houses across the street empty and dark.

“How many are there?” he asked me as we both started eating from the same bowl. The stew was cold but we didn’t care. “Houses, I mean.”

“It was thirty-nine. Less three for the office, the storage, and the infirmary… Though the office’s down now. Thirty-six, less the occupied ones… I guess they’re seven now that Sasha and her brother are here… So now we got what, twenty-nine empty houses?”

“That’s a lot. And they’re all like this?”

“This is the smaller model, there’re bigger ones. On the other side of the Village, it’s two of three that got three bedrooms. Like I said… There’s plenty of space for everyone.”

“You mean it? What you said to Rick?”

“Sure… I want everyone to move here. It if was my choice… But I guess Rick makes the decisions for ya’ll now.”

He paused for a moment before answering, “Rick ain’t in his right mind these days.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, ‘cause of Lori. He didn’t even look at the baby for a couple of days.”

I looked down as I thought of the baby. She and Jack would have been born with just one month apart if I had come to term. If she was less than a week old, Jack would’ve been one month now. My throat tightened a little at the thought.

“Grief will do that to people…” I said after a moment, aware Daryl had been watching me, probably knowing exactly where my mind had gone to.

“I know,” he said gravely. “Know all about grief. But that ain’t all. He feels guilty, don’t know how to handle it.”

“He blames himself for her death?”

“Kinda… He let those inmates among us. The ones who let the walkers inside.”

“Oh… That’s why he didn’t want Sasha and her brother to stay.”

“Yeah. He don’t trust new people no more.”

“Kinda see his point…”

“Somethin’ else too… He wasn’t treatin’ Lori right. Before.”

“How so?”

“They weren’t together anymore. He barely spoke to her.”

“What, seriously? All this time on the road? With her _pregnant_?”

“Yeah.”

I let go of my fork and rested my forehead in my hand. “Fuck, ‘s because of _Shane_ , ain’t it?”

Daryl just nodded, his anger by the simple mention of the murderer’s name visible in his expression.

“Shit, that’s got so many layers…” I sad thoughtfully as I looked out the window. “Nobody can blame her… She thought he was dead.”

“I thought you were dead too and didn’t go fuck the first woman that showed up in front of me.”

I looked at him at his bitter tone and was silent for a moment. “I glad you didn’t… But people deal different with the pain. We all got different ways of grieving.”

I got up then, uncomfortable to think of my own way of dealing with my grief. I’d have to tell him and that was not gonna be a nice conversation. I reached for the radio I had left thrown on the couch and pressed the button.

“Miranda, you there?”

Daryl got up from the table, watching me, not really understanding my sudden withdrawal and the radio call.

“Hi Sam?” she answered.

“If you ain’t busy, can you meet me at the infirmary? Gotta get new bandages.”

“I’ll meet you there.”

At the silence of the radio, I looked at Daryl, who had questions in his eyes but was saying nothing. He bit on his inner lip.

“Walk me there?” I asked and he just nodded.

On our way out, I took a pack of cigarettes from the side table in the living room. Honey came out with us and started walking ahead, smelling everything, running and just having a good time. My crossbow was on the porch and I didn’t do ahead with my impulse to grab it and hang it on my back because of my bad shoulder. We stopped by the car so Daryl could get his, and started walking. I lit up a cigarette and handed him the pack and lighter, and we were silent for a while, walking and smoking together. When he broke the silence it was in a grave voice, nearly a whisper.

“You know we’re gonna have to speak of it eventually.”

I took a deep pull and looked up at the sky before blowing the smoke away. It was a very starry night.

“Yeah,” I whispered at the quiet night. “We will.”

I was dreading it. I didn’t want to tell him, even though I knew I would. I didn’t want to say the words. I hadn’t had to tell anyone about it yet, everyone had been around and we rarely spoke of it those days, so now I’d have to organize thoughts and form words and describe situations and feelings, and I was simply _dreading_ it.

Silently, feeling I was not in a good place now, Daryl reached for me and pulled me to his side, enveloping my back with his arm. I circled his waist with mine and he squeezed me close, lowering his head to kiss my hair.

I breathed out in relief. I was relieved he was here, relived he understood and didn’t push. I rested my face on his chest even as we still walked slowly down the street.

The infirmary house door was open and the light inside was on when we arrived. Honey tried going in with me but I made her lay on the porch and stay as Daryl and I got in. Miranda was getting things ready inside.

“Hey doc!”

“Hi, mi amor,” she said coming to hug me, but not touching me with her gloved hands. “How are you feeling?”

“I’m alright. You remember Daryl?”

“Of course, of course. Good to see you!”

Daryl nodded at her with a little smile, a bit uncomfortable.

“You want me to wait outside?”

“Please stay?” I asked with no need to think about it. I didn’t want him away from me even now. He nodded and found a place to lean against a counter, watching over.

Miranda asked me to take off my sweatpants so she could take a look at the shot wound on my thigh. I sat in a chair after taking them off. The wound was stitched up and the skin around it was bruised purple from the impact, but it didn’t look as bad as expected. Miranda sat on another chair in front of me and leaned down to look at it, with alcohol and gauze in hand.

She looked over her shoulder to ask Daryl, “Who tended to it?”

“Hershel, at the prison. He’s a vet.”

“War veteran?”

“Veterinarian,” I clarified.

“Huh…” and she started cleaning it with alcohol. “He used clothes thread. Not ideal… Did he disinfect it first?”

“Dipped it in alcohol,” Daryl explained. “The needle too.”

“Good… He did a good job with what he had, I guess. But it worries me if he used the same thread to stitch inside.”

“He threw a whole lotta alcohol in there before closing.”

“Si, Bueno… Let’s hope it was enough. I’ll bandage it but I wanna take a look at it twice – no, three times a day to make sure there’s no signs of an infection. The first little thing I see I’ll go in there; comprende?”

“Yes, ma’am”, I answered a bit scared but also proud of her being such a caring, good doctor. No matter she’d not been one before, she’d been a nurse, but now she was our doctor and that was it.

“We got antibiotics but not much. You’ll take one now and then every twelve hours until they’re over. I’ll put it on Michonne’s list…”

She made a better-looking bandage then Hershel’s had been and I got up to put on my sweats again.

“What about my movements?”

“You’ll be sore for a while; bullets go in burning. When we can take off the stitches your muscle’s gonna be weakened, you’ll have to exercise got get the strength back, _but_ ,” she raised her voice and pointed a finger at me, “only after we remove the stitches and see no signs of infection, escuchame?”

I smiled, “Yes, ma’am!”

She huffed, “You joke but you’d better listen to me. E tú,” she said turning to Daryl, who got startled by the small, authoritative woman, “gotta make her be careful because for what I know this girl she’ll ignore all I’ve just said.”

“No, I won’t!” I defended myself.

“Yes, you will,” Daryl said. “I’ll take care of her,” he guaranteed.

“Good. Now, there was the shoulder too, right?”

“We popped it back in place while she was unconscious,” Daryl told her.

“Can you move it?”

“Uh, a little,” I said even as I tried moving it. The elbow movement was fine; it had only hurt before because it’d been bent for a long time. Then I rounded my shoulder up and back and it moved fine, but not without pain. “Hurts a little, but much less than I expected.”

“Esta bien, I won’t bandage it anymore. You take it slow but keep trying to move, feel your own limits,” and then she calmed down a little because she’d been getting passionate about my care, and she reached for my hand. “You’ll be fine, mi amor, gracias a Dios.”

She hugged me again, quietly this time, and when she let go she held my face in her hands, already without the gloves, and smiled tearfully at me.

“Now go, get away from here,” she said letting me go with a quick laugh.

I turned to leave but looked back at her, “Did you check on Sasha?”

“Yes, they brought her over. I gave her a bag of fluids and sent her home. She was supposed to have some dinner, drink a lot of water and sleep it off. She was feeling weak but she’ll be okay tomorrow.”

“And the graze on Michonne’s leg?”

“I just cleaned and bandaged it again. It didn’t even affect the muscle, she got lucky.”

Satisfied, I left with Daryl following me close, my heart warmed up and I smiled. Miranda was not much older than the rest of us, Merle was probably even older than her, but she’d been more and more acting as a mother to everyone. Healer mentality, maybe. But now that I thought of it…

“They lost the children,” I told Daryl once we were out on the street again, heading back home, Honey following us quietly. “Sometime between their leaving the camp and me finding them on the road…”

“Fuck… Both of’em?”

“Yeah.”

“How?”

“They never gave details… Just said they got overrun and… They were gone.”

“Shit…”

“Michonne did too. She had a three-year-old boy.”

He said nothing for a while, but looking sideways at him I saw he was looking down and shaking his head as he bit on his lip.

“’S like ain’t nobody who ain’t lost someone these days.”

“Yeah… Guess not.”

“’Cept that I lost a bother and a girlfriend and then got both of’em back from the dead.”

I laughed saying “On the same day!”

He smiled with me and pulled me again into his arms as we walked. “It was a good day.”

“The best.”

He looked down and I looked up, looking at each other eyes as we smiled. He leaned a bit more to give me a quick kiss on the lips. This thing here, this thing we were feeling and living, it was new. It was the same people, the same love, but this sort of situation we’d never had. It seemed so natural, though, so normal, so like we were supposed to be doing all along, and this was the kind of relationship I’d ached to have with Daryl.

We could have it now.

We reached the house again and, instead of going in, I sat on the front steps looking out to the street, the wounded leg straightened over the steps and the left one bent. Daryl sat one step below me, his back to the rails. He lit up a cigarette from my pack that he’d kept and gave it to me.

I smoked in silence for a moment, thinking about how to start. This was not gonna be easy. I passed him back the cigarette and blew out the smoke with my eyes closed.

“I was in the seventh month. Got big, round and all, and he moved. Kicked strongly sometimes, and when he did I could see my stomach moving,” I told him with hand gestures too. “He was going well… But he wasn’t ready. He needed those two more months inside to be ready, and he didn’t have it.”

I looked at Daryl as he passed me the cigarette back. He was silent, just listening, and I could see chis chest was working hard as it if was difficult to breathe. Hearing it all was gonna hurt on him nearly as much as it had hurt on me, but we needed to do this.

We needed to restart our story with all in the open.

I looked back at the street and the path in front of the house, the one I had made just two days before. It felt much longer.

“These people came to the gate and I went up the platform to see them. They wanted in, you know, to live here, they could see even from out there this was a safe place, but man…” I shook my head, took another pull and handed him the cigarette. “I didn’t like’em. The things they said, their fake humility. I told’em no, I didn’t want them inside. But…” I huffed out a laugh. “I could see they were starving, I couldn’t just…” I paused for a few moments. “I offered them supplies and went out there to hand it to them in a bag. I went out through the gate. I could’ve thrown the bag from the platform… I could’ve opened the gate just enough to put it out there for them… I could… I should’ve…” I was shaking my head, emotion already getting to me this early in the story.

“What’d they do?” Daryl asked quietly.

“This guy got angry I said no, then said there were not enough supplies in the bag…” I paused and looked down, not seeing anything. “He attacked me with a knife. He aimed for the stomach.”

Daryl reacted exactly as I thought he would. He nearly got up but decided to stay where he was, but bent his legs to rest his elbows on them and his face in his hands, shaking his head angrily, his expression scrunched. I was quiet for a moment before moving on.

“They were all shot dead instantly, they had no chance. I don’t even remember how it all happened from then on because it was in panic. I was too fucking terrified my brain didn’t even register things well… I’d never been so afraid in my life, Daryl…” and tears started escaping from my eyes. “And I’d been scared before, real scared. Waking up in that field with Shane… Having his hands around my neck was horrifying but… But this thing I felt then, it was a whole other level of scary.”

I looked at him then, at his face covered in angry tears, twisted in pain as if he was living it all right now. My heart hurt to see it, and I looked away, closing my eyes to make more tears roll out.

“They brought me back in and kept trying to tell me it was okay, it hadn’t hit the baby, it was superficial. But my body and my mind… I don’t know, they were in overdrive, they were insane at that moment, and there was nothing… Fuckin’ nothing I could do to stop it. It all got me into labor.”

“It wasn’t the stab?” Daryl asked with a shaky voice, surprised.

“No. It was the stress, the panic… It triggered me into labor and I couldn’t stop it,” and I took one painful, sharp breath in, crying. “There was nothing I could do.”

Daryl had his hands buried in his hair as he looked down, swaying a little where he sat.

“I caused it… It was my fault,” I caught myself saying.

This was it. The words I’d never said or even though straight.

My baby’s death had been my fault.

“No,” Daryl said with a raspy voice as he looked at me again. “Don’t… Don’t do this to yourself. It wasn’t your fault.”

“I shouldn’t have gone out there!”

“You couldn’t know! You were helpin’em, why would he stab you?”

“Because _people_!” I cried.

“No, no…”, Daryl scooched over closer to me, held my leg up to rest on his and wrapped his arms around my waist. “Please, Sam, don’t do this, it wasn’t your fault.”

“I’d have carried him to term… He’d be here today.”

“Listen to me,” he said looking up at me and holding my face in his hands, making me look at him, “It was done to you. Is was that sonofabitch’s fault, not yours, _he_ did it. Not you. And he got killed for it, didn’t he?” I just nodded and I cried, and I lowered my head until our foreheads touched. “It wasn’t your fault, baby… Please don’t think that.”

I had no idea how much I needed to hear it. These words, coming from the man I loved and who loved me and knew me. I looked again at his eyes, both of us had them filled with tears, pain on our faces.

“Do you really think that?”

“Of course,” he answered immediately. “Ain’t like you can blame yourself for what Shane did either, why’d it be your fault what this motherfucker did to you?”

I nodded, still crying. He tried drying my tears with his thumb.

“I was scared you’d blame me…” I confessed in a whisper. “You’d hate me for it…”

He shook his head slowly, eyes on mine, “How could I ever hate you?” I closed my eyes and more tears fell off. “Listen to me…” he said making me open them to look at him again. “I love you. What happened ain’t your fault. Okay?”

There was so much love in his eyes and just pure truth, and I believed him. My heart was hurting but it did a little less then, like part of the weight in it had been lifted from my chest just by his words.

“I love you too…” I whispered, my chin trembling.

He dried my tears again and kissed me on the lips before we hugged and stayed like that for a while, holding each other and swaying a little.

“It was so fast…” I said after a while, still in his arms, and he let go to look at me again. He was uncomfortable in this position, so he turned a little to accommodate himself, his back once again against the rail, but this time he pulled me go move there with him, my legs over his. He looked at me then, waiting for me to continue. “I think not even four hours from the stab ‘til he came out. It hurt like hell… Physically. But it hurt more that I knew it was too early, I knew he was coming out but he… I just knew it. That’s what hurt the most.”

“Someone stayed with you?”

“Yeah. Merle and Michonne did. Andrea would come and go but at the moment he was born it was Miranda helping me, and Michonne by my side… Pro’ly crushed her fingers… And Merle sat at my back, holding me up.”

“Damn… Merle?”

I smiled a little, “Yeah, Merle. He was there all the time,” Daryl raised his eyebrows in surprise but said nothing more. I took a few seconds to move on, now looking at nothing. “He was so little… All perfect, but just so small…” and I smiled tearfully, the feeling of Daryl’s eyes on me working as a soft, cozy safety blanket. “He was so brave, Daryl… Jack… Bravest little men ever… He fought hard for it, he tried all he could. He was a fighter his whole life,” and hearing this Daryl looked down, breathing hard, emotion all over his posture. “And he lived his whole life in the safest place possible… Right here,” I said bringing both my hands to my chest and holding them there, eyes closed as I remembered having him there against my skin. “He was loved, so loved, and I know he felt that love for every single minute of his life.”

Daryl was crying again and didn’t try to hold it. He bent over and lowered his head to my stomach, circling me with his arms. I hugged his head against me and shushed him tenderly, rocking him in my arms a little.

“It wasn’t a bad life he had, you know? He had to fight but he was also loved and held, and he heard only good things. It wasn’t a bad life.”

“I had to be here…” Daryl’s voice sounded muffled against me. “I wanted to be here for him. For you. I had to be here…”

I said nothing, my chest hurting again. His pain was palpable and I could feel it in me. I never wanted to have to tell him that story. That was the reason I didn’t even wish I’d find him again, it was because this here, this very moment, was what I wanted to avoid. Protect him from.

He calmed his breath slowly and lifted his head after a while, drying his face with his hands, allowing me to go on, saying nothing else.

“I didn’t even see the moment he was gone, I just… Realized he wasn’t there anymore. I still held him for a while but knew he wasn’t there anymore, it just… Broke me. I have no right memories of those moments after, I don’t remember him being taken away, it’s like a blur… I was just gone. For days after that, I had no thoughts, just pain. They all had to take care of me, Miranda was there all the time, the others had to feed me, give me water, clean me up… I did nothing and I don’t really remember much. I was gone with him. Until…”

I stopped again. Fuck, that was gonna be one more difficult part. I swallowed hard, the lump on my throat painful, and reached for the cigarettes again, lighting one up. Daryl simply waited, as if he knew something bad was coming. Something worse than all I’d said so far.

So I just said it, in one short, crude sentence.

“I tried to kill myself.”

I hesitated to look at Daryl again. I was looking down, smoking, and he was silent, and for a moment I didn’t want to see the look on his face. But I did look at him eventually, and there it was, the exact look I’d wanted to avoid, the pain and shock I never wanted to be responsible for.

“I cut off the dreads, shaved my whole head, sneaked out of the Village… I locked myself in a car, put on real loud music, got surrounded by a big crowd of walkers… And I drank a whole bottle of tequila. If they hadn’t tracked me… Merle and Michonne, if they…” I paused to take a deep, painful breath. “I’d have died in there. They brought me back and saved my life. And they keep doing it, and the others. They keep saving me, holding me up. They say I’m the leader of this place but I’d be nothing without’em. I might hold this place together, but they are the ones who keep _me_ together. These girls, Andrea and Michonne, they are my sisters. And, as inappropriate as this gonna sound, Merle’s my brother.”

He was nodding, he didn’t seem to find it inappropriate. “This is family,” he said in a raspy voice. “You made a family.”

“I did… And it kept me alive because for a while I didn’t even have the desire to find you anymore. This thing that had helped me keep on going all these months, I lost it. I didn’t hope I’d find you anymore, because I knew you’d have to suffer it all over again, I’d have to tell you… I knew _this_ that we’re doing now would have to happen and I didn’t want it, it didn’t want to see you suffer. And, you know… Being pregnant and taking care of my baby had been my main fuel all that long, but the desire to find you was right there too, keeping me up. And I lost both things at the same time.”

“But you got it back?” Daryl asked quietly, looking down to my leg on top of his, his fingertips tracing my knee. “Did you want again to find me?”

“I did. It came back to me. I started hoping for it again when I stopped drinking. Again… Because I kept up with it, I hid it from them but every time I went out there I’d hole up somewhere to get drunk.”

“You got back to it?”

“Yeah… I’m an addict, you know that. Ain’t that simple to just get drunk once - and by getting drunk I mean drinking myself into a fuckin’ coma - and then just don’t drink again after that.”

“But you quit?”

“Yep. Merle found weed, it helped.

He was surprised, a little laugh escaping his lips, “You smoke weed?”

I smiled with him, “Yeah. You know it ain’t bad.”

“I know. But for you? It ain’t bad?”

“No. It’s good. If I gotta have somethin’ at least it won’t make me feel as depressed and alcohol did. Whenever I was drunk I kept thinkin’ I should try again. To die, I mean. Weed won’t do that to me.”

He nodded, understanding. “Man, it’s been a long time.”

I smiled at him. We were finally not crying anymore and the air got lighter. It was done. The whole story was out there, he knew everything, and he was still here. Smiling at me with love in his eyes, and he didn’t hate me, he didn’t blame me. It was done and we were fine.

We were better than fine. We were together.


	47. Day 311, part 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I debated if I'd post this chapter or not because it's mainly a filler, just the end of the night of their encounter.
> 
> It'll show drug use - if you don't like it the chapter can be skipped - and smut, smut, smut, real SHAMELESS smut. 
> 
> You've been warned!  
> ENJOY!

I untangled myself from him and got up with a bit of difficulty, a hand on his shoulder and then on the rail to push me up, and limped my way to the door. Honey entered ahead of me as I opened it and hopped up on the couch, her favorite spot on the house to sleep, and as she got comfortable she huffed a loud, satisfied sigh. Life was perfect for her, and it wasn’t so bad for me either.

There was a little shelved cabinet by the door, from where I got the little plastic wrap where I kept my weed, the rolling paper and a small pair of scissors. Returning after closing the door, I sat again by Daryl, who had lit another cigarette, and handed them to him.

“Let’s see if you still got it.”

He passed me the lit cigarette before taking them, “Pro’ly like riding a bike.”

“We’ll see,” I said as I got more comfortable, stretching the wounded leg. “I am very good at it, just so you know. I roll _the_ perfect joints.”

“Cocky,” he said with a side smirk as he started working on the plant with the scissors. “You sure this is ok?”

“I am. Really.”

“The others don’t mind?”

“They don’t mind, but they don’t smoke either. Andrea did once but says she didn’t enjoy it much.”

“And you smoke with Merle?”

“I smoke with Merle,” I said nodding with a smile. “Ain’t never thought, my whole life that one day I’d be sharing moments and joints and stories with Merle Dixon. But then again, never thought dead people would rise, so.”

Daryl gathered the weed on the paper and started working on it, “You never thought you’d be my girl either.”

“Nope,” I laughed. “It’s kinda good sometimes things don’t go the way we think.”

Daryl kept his smirk and his eyes on me as he slowly put his tongue out and licked the paper from side to side.

_Damn._

“Hm…” was all I managed to mumble.

“Hm?”

I smiled, shaking my head slowly, “Fuck you with that tongue…”

“Nah. It’s gonna be fuck _you_ with that tongue later.”

 _Holy fuck_ , that one traveled from every spot of my body directly to my groin.

“I bet I know what kinda high you are,” I told him as he showed me the rolled joint. It was not bad.

“Bet you got that right.”

Oh, the promises for tonight! I was exhausted but I didn’t want this day to be over. I could stay right here until morning, just with him, near, talking, listening to his voice. My very best friend, my love.

And he was _here_.

He handed me the joint but I didn’t take it, “You do the honors.”

We were silent as he lit it up and I just watched him as I rested my chin in my hand. I probably looked like a loon. He took a deep, slow pull, held my look and the smoke inside for a moment, and then closed his eyes, letting his head fall back against the rail, to only then blow it out.

“Damn…” he said right after.

I was smiling at him like a teenager in love. I was so goddamn happy right now, even after all the heavy talk we’d just had.

This, right here, was a happy moment.

“Good, isn’t it?” I asked, extending my hand to take it.

He handed it nodding, “Where’d you get it?”

“They found it in the basement of a house. Merle says there was a plantation on the back, but they’d collected it already, it was all drying inside the house. It’s a lot. Really, a lot.”

I took my own pull then and felt him watching me just as I had watched him. I held it in, keeping my eyes on his, and then looked up, closed my eyes and opened my mouth. I allowed the smoke to come out slowly, barely blowing it.

“Damn, girl…” he said again.

“Let’s be honest,” I said handing it to him again. “This is way better than alcohol, ain’t it?”

“Thought you liked alcohol.”

“My fucked up brain do,” I explained. “But my conscious mind don’t. It ain’t good for me, you know… The effects. The thoughts in my head get all fucked up. With pot they just… Calm down.”

“It’s why I smoked,” he said holding his breath and handing the joint back. “Preferred it to drinkin’ ‘cause I’m and asshole when I’m drunk. Didn’t wanna be like my father or Merle.”

“Yeah… Good for you. I got addicted to it too early, had no control over it,” and I paused to take a pull and kept talking as I held by breath. “Was starting already when we met. Fourteen,” I blew it out. “Kept stealing Bobbi’s wine. Liked the fuzz it made me feel. _Biiiiig_ mistake…”

“You got out of it twice now. Most people can’t do that.”

“Yeah…” I nodded slowly, my head starting to get a bit lighter.

I watched him smoke again and _damn_. He looked so relaxed, so in peace, just so entirely _there_ , it was beautiful to see. The subject he talked about then was not that tranquil, though.

“What you said about the old lady…

“Hm?”

“Ma? That she’ll be dyin’ soon?”

“Yeah?”

“You gotta have someone watching out all the time. If she dies alone an’ nobody sees? She’ll turn.”

I thought for a moment, looking at him. The thing I could only guess until these days, he was affirming with certainty.

“You sure o’that?”

“Yep. Everyone turns.”

“How’d you learn that?”

“Rick told us. Jenner told him at the CDC.”

Wait.

_Wait, what?_

“He knew that all along?!”

“Yeah… Says he didn’t know how to tell us ‘cause it was too big. Thought it was better to keep it.”

“The motherfucker…” I looked away from Daryl, thinking, and was silent for a moment. “Could’ve at least told _me_!”

“Told him that… Knew you’d have told it at least to _me_ if you knew.”

“Course I would! Damn… And he didn’t tell anyone? His wife? Shane?”

“Nope. Nobody.”

“And Jenner just up and told Rick that –”

“We’re all infected.”

There was a moment of silence in my head when my high mind processed these words and then…

_We’re all infected._

“Fuck, Daryl, do you have any idea how huge this is?”

“Is just what it is… We die but not the brain? We turn.”

“That could mean…” I was high and making weird connections in my head that I might not be able to do normally. Or maybe I would, who knows “That could mean the thing don’t kill us!”

“What?”

“That could mean the thing don’t kill us!”

“What?”

“That could mean the thing don’t kill us!”

“I head what you said, I’m just asking you to explain!” he exclaimed with a chuckle.

But I was in the conspiracy mode, “If we all got it then how could it kill us? No, hear me out!’ I said even if he hadn’t tried to stop me. “If it’s the same thing we already got in our system, why would it kill us when they bite?” I handed him back the joint that I didn’t even see how ended up being in my hand. “The virus thingy don’t kill us ‘cause we already got it!”

“Then why do we die after a bite?”

“I – I don’t know.”

“’Cept when they bite someth’ vital, like neck or whatever, then people die from the bite and the bleeding,” he was confabulating just like I was.

“Yeah, that, but when the bite ain’t in a vital place, like Hershel’s leg or someth’, why do we die if we’re already infected?”

“Gotta be someth’ ‘bout the bite,” he answered thoughtfully.

We both stopped in silence to think, and we were both really high right now.

“It infects –” he started.

“Infection!” I said at the same time and we looked at each other in awe for couple seconds

“We die of the infection to the wound that spreads!” he said, as if mind blown when in fact he was just high.

“The virus don’t kill us! It just takes over after the body dies, so no matter if it dies of the infection or of anything else.”

“So if there was this one mighty, super motherfucker antibiotic that could stop the infection it’d all be done.”

“Yeah!” and I laughed at our incredible discover, but sobered up almost instantly. “But there ain’t no mighty, super motherfucker antibiotic…”

“Nah… So all this shit actually mean crap.”

I laughed, “We’re just as fucked up as before!”

He laughed with me because this was ridiculous, and then we laughed just because it was so fucking funny that we were laughing at such a serious matter. Then we were laughing because it was insane that we were here right now, living this moment. I ended up dragging myself to the rail where he had his back to and sitting just above him on the stairs, my legs thrown over his, and we guffawed, laughter tears falling from our eyes. He tried to say something but was laughing to much he couldn’t form words and then I was laughing at him for it and he was laughing at himself.

“Oh, fuck, I can’t breathe!” I managed to form the words and let myself fall back, lying down on the porch and kept on laughing.

Damn, that was so delicious!

Even as I laughed I felt Daryl’s hand on me, gliding over my sweatpants from my knee to my thigh, then moving to the other leg and doing the same. I was just smiling largely now and feeling it, eyes closed.

“So what kinda high you say I am?” he said into the dark and seemingly into my soul.

“Oh, you’re the horny one, sure thing.”

“You can bet your ass I am…”

He spread my legs and touched me over my sweatpants, strongly, his hand sliding hard over the fabric, touching all the right points. I moaned and sat up, my head lowering to his. He captured my mouth hungrily as I lowered my hand immediately to his pants, feeling him hard inside and grabbing him. He growled in my mouth, grabbing one of my beasts roughly. I opened his jeans hurriedly and buried my hand in there, finding he hadn’t put on any underwear. He groaned again, letting go of my mouth when I closed my hand around him, and buried his head on my neck.

“You have the most perfect cock, d’you know that?” I whispered as I wanked him.

“Want it inside your pussy?”

“I want it everywhere…”

“Fuck… Where you want it, baby?”

I moved my hand faster up and down on him, “In my hand… In my mouth…”

“Where else girl?”

“I want it in my pussy… In my ass. Everywhere.”

“Oh fuck, you gonna kill me!”

There was precum in my hand lubricating his cock and I wanted to get him off right there, but my eyes caught something. From the bend at the street there was the light of a flashlight moving. Someone was doing the rounds, coming our way.

“Someone’s coming,” I told him in a whisper.

“Yeah, me.”

“No,” I said stopping and removing my hand from him. “Someone’s coming!”

He got it then and we both stumbled to our feet. He held his pants up as we ran inside the house, near falling over each other. I closed the door and kept on into the house, pulling him by his hand straight to the bedroom. He pushed me, making me fall across the bed and standing there, bending over grab the hem of my pants and slide them down, my panties following just as quickly.

I didn’t even follow his movements, I was just suddenly opened up for him, my feet still held together because of the tangle of my clothes around my shoes. And his mouth was on me, his tongue flat in a long, slow, thorough swipe. I was making sounds but wasn’t even listening to them. I could tell he was trying to remove my shoes even as he still licked me from bottom up, but I could recognize nothing else. Next thing I know all the tangle was gone and my feet were in the air, Daryl’s head buried there as he feasted on me. He rubbed his hole face there before getting to all the right spots, tongue, lips, teeth, fingers. And he loved it. I could tell how much he loved doing it, having me in his mouth, because his eyes were telling me that. He groaned and moaned in pleasure as I screamed orgasming on his mouth, wetting him all over.

It was perfection, simply perfection.

I looked up at him to see him still with his shirt on, holding his erection in hand and licking his lips. Fuck, the man was gonna kill me. I reached down to touch myself and his eyes glued on my hand there.

“Fuck me, Daryl,” I moaned at him.

I did not have to insist. He was in me almost instantly, sinking to the bottom and making us both cry out in pleasure. He stood there, rested his weight in his hands on the bed and fucked me hard, maniacally.

“Damn girl, you can take a pound, can’t ya?”

There was a laugh mixed with all the other noises I was making, “And you’re crazy ‘bout it, ain’t you?”

He rested one knee to the bed, changing the angle a bit and I screamed, hands hitting the mattress.

“Look at you… You fuckin’ love it huh?”

“Fuck yes, I fuckin’ love it!” and I reached a hand to grab his shirt and pull him down until his face was closer to mine. I looked up at his eyes even as he still fucked me. “Are you’re mine, Daryl?”

He hissed, “Yes!”

“Say it, tell me you’re mine.”

He groaned in pleasure, “I’m yours, Sam, I’m yours, I’m all fuckin’ yours,” and his pace was erratic, his voice trembling, “Cum for me, sweetheart, lemme feel you cum.”

He didn’t need to do much after that. I fell over the edge, orgasming voicelessly and he went over right with me. Breathless, with my heart pounding all over my body, sweaty all over, I felt Daryl fall on the bed by my side, looking up at the ceiling, and I closed my eyes to try and catch my breath.

Next thing I knew Daryl was dragging me over the bed to lie in the right position, my head hitting the pillow, and I felt him throw a sheet over me. Then he molded his body against my back, head buried on the back of my neck.

Before I fell back asleep, I heard him whisper into the darkness, “I love you, Sam…”


	48. Day 312, part 1

Daryl had this amazing power to make me feel the world hadn’t ended. That life was simply going on as usual, like we were just a couple together in bed, hidden from the outside world, from work, poverty, family problems. Like it was just the two of us and the world was still crap but it was outside, away from us, away from this safe haven, from the safety of our arms around each other. I had felt that before when we got together, in those few days before my life imploded, and now I was feeling it again.

It was raining this morning and I knew it was very early because there was just a little light coming from the edges of the flowery curtain. The water fell from the heavens to the leaves of the trees all around the house, to the roof and the pavement. It was gurgling down the rain gutter to be collected inside a big barrel behind the house. The Village was quiet, peaceful, and inside our house, our bedroom, it was warm and cozy and I was in his arms. My Daryl.

I turned around in his arms to face him. He was just waking up too, wrapping his arms around my lazily, eyes still closed. I buried my head on his chest and held him tightly against me, our legs tangled together. Both his arms were around me, I was enveloped in there, safe, hidden from everything. Without even opening our eyes or speaking, we were touching each other slowly and softly. I started spreading kisses on his chest and his neck and he sighed in contentment. After a long moment, I moved my leg up to rest on his waist and rounded my hip on his, his erection finding me with no effort like it knew exactly where to be. He entered me and we breathed together, sighed, moaned quietly as we made early morning love. I’d needed this to know it hadn’t all been a dream, that I hadn’t been tripping, that it was all real and this was what life was like now. We came together, foreheads touching. I lowered my leg again and he slid out of me, but we kept on hugging like that for a long time. I could feel his heart pounding inside his chest and it lulled me back to sleep.

I was sprawled in bed, stomach up and Honey was there, her heavy head resting on my hip and I was sticky and sweaty and I guess I heard the last of my snores when I woke up. I hadn’t slept this deeply in a real long time. Daryl wasn’t there and the bedroom as lighter, the day having risen fully now, at least to mid-morning. The door was open and from the kitchen, I could hear movement and the sound of a pan or a kettle being set on the stove. I thought of what we had at home to eat and came up with nothing, so he was probably just going to brew some coffee – that I had a lot.

I scratched Honey’s belly for a while, lazily, until I decided to get up. She stayed there, still lying down but looking at me. Without bothering to put on any clothes I went straight to the bathroom, where I relieved myself, took a quick, cold shower to clean myself of all the remains from yesterday, and brushed my teeth.

The house smelled like coffee when I left the bathroom and reentered the bedroom to get dressed. Honey had left the bed already.

“Damn, I can get used to that!” I said from there.

Daryl hummed in response from the kitchen, “D’you know how long it’s been since I had coffee?”

“I’m guessing _really long?”_

“I guess one of the last ones were served by you at that diner.”

That was a whole lifetime ago. Nothing that I felt for him now existed back then yet, and it had been just a few months ago. Life had changed drastically and it was not just about the apocalypse.

Daryl was shirtless and barefoot in the kitchen, his pants hanging low on his hips as he finished brewing the coffee, and seeing that my heart swelled in my chest.

Damn, I loved him so fucking much…

“Good morning,” I said with a smile making him turn to look at me. He gave me the little sideways smile that made him look absolutely adorable, and as I got to him, he wrapped my waist in his arms and lowered his face to brush his lips on mine. He smelled like toothpaste.

“Morning, sweetheart,” he whispered before kissing me softly.

I hugged him then, hanging myself around his shoulders, and squeezed him tightly, my face on his neck, feeling him hold my head with a hand and rub my back with the other. We just felt each other for a moment but got rudely interrupted by Honey, who wanted some attention too, jumping on us, front legs up. Daryl poured me a mug of coffee while I petted and spoke to her, making her all giddy. I adored this dog!

“You got something to do today?” he asked me as I accepted the coffee.

I hummed in agreement as I took a sip. “Damn, that’s good,” I complimented his coffee. “Not much to do but I wanna talk to people. See how Sasha’s doing, and her brother, what’s his name again?”

“Tyreese.”

“Tyreese. I wanna talk to them and to David and Emma too, they’ve been here for just a few days and all this happened just when they arrived. They’re just kids, gotta be confused.”

“But other than that you gotta rest.”

“I will…” I told him and took another sip of coffee, my hip resting on the kitchen sink, and he made the known pff sound at me. “What? I will! I’ll come back home and take a… Nap.”

He laughed, “You, takin’ nap.”

“Damn, not even I believed in that one!”

“I mean it, Sam… You gotta take it easy. You got blood transfusion just yesterday, for fuck’s sakes.”

“I know. And I wanna get full mobility back, I know I gotta be careful. Really.”

He nodded, apparently satisfied now, and placed his mug inside the sink as he said, “Good, ‘cause I gotta go back to the prison and won’t be able to keep an eye on ya.”

“Oh?”

“Gotta talk to Rick, and the others…” he said quietly and he rested his hands on the sink, looking sideways at me.

I nodded, looking at him too. “Yeah, I…” and I looked away and a little down. “Yeah.”

Shit, I did not know how to hide my feelings from him. From others, sure, but not from Daryl. I could hear it myself in my voice how much I didn’t want him to go away now.

“Hey,” he said to make me look at him again. “I’ll come back.”

“Today?”

“I think so.”

“Fuck, that sucks. You know I want you here, right? All the way. For good.”

“I know,” he said and paused, looking out the house through the low kitchen window, “Ain’t that simple.”

I crossed my arms, “I know. You gone through a lot with’em.”

“Yeah… Can’t just leave’em like that,” he paused as my heart sunk just a little more inside my chest. “Maybe I won’t have to.”

“How?” I looked sideways at him.

“I don’t know… I’ll talk to Rick.”

I sighed heavily and looked down again, and that made him move to stand in front of me, hands in my upper arms as he bent a little to look at my face.

“You know I ain’t leavin’ you, right? Just gotta do right by them.”

I smiled sadly up at him, “I wouldn’t expect anything different from you.”

* * *

As we both went back to the bedroom to get dressed for the day, Honey laying down at the door, always near us, I knew Daryl wanted to say something. He was quiet, looking content but there was just _something_ that he wanted to say or do and was holding back. I was sitting in bed, finished trying my boots and looked up at him as he buttoned up his sleeveless black shirt.

“Daryl? What is it?”

“Hm?”

“You wanna say something.”

He didn’t say anything, just thought for a moment longer, then lowered his head, bashful.

“It’s ‘bout Jack…”

“Yeah?”

“Does he…” and he paused to look at me. “Where is he?”

My eyes softened on his and I offered a sad smile. “I’ll take you there.”

He just nodded as be bit on his lip apprehensively. I left the bedroom and he followed me out. We crossed the small house quietly and I opened the door, letting Honey go out first. She sprinted away and out of sight as we stepped onto the porch. My dark grey crossbow was still there, resting against the railing. I picked it but on my right hand, testing how my shoulder felt like with its weight. It hurt a little but it was perfectly bearable, so I hang it on my back and went down the porch steps. Daryl was already down there, looking at me approach.

“Yep. As I said,” he said nodding and looking up and down at me. “You look fuckin’ hot carrying that thing.”

I was smiling and maybe blushing a little when I reached him and we started walking together. I guided him across the street, “I guess a crossbow got this effect. First time I saw you with yours? Entering the house to help me, crossbow in hand and all? You looked like a goddamn superhero.”

That got him shy and blushing a little too. Adorable, adorable man.

Crossing the street, we passed through the area between the two houses across from mine and entered the woods area, headed to the back corner of the Village. It wasn’t far, and we made our way there in silence, all jokes gone because of where we were going. Jack’s grave was ahead of us, just under an oak tree, the white stones around it and his headstone with white letters.

 _Jack Dixon-Danes_.

Daryl stood there, looking at it, both hands grabbing the crossbow strap on his chest, reading his name. I had tears in my eyes already, just being here made me cry and I did come here every day except for the past three days. I looked from Daryl to the headstone and spoke to Jack in my mind.

_Hi baby… Mom’s here… Mom misses you…_

When Daryl spoke, his voice was quiet and trembling. “You gave him my name…”

He lowered himself to the ground then, sitting in the earth staring at the headstone, and I allowed him a moment, taking a few steps back. He’d talk to me when he wanted to. I rested my back on the next tree and waited, watching as Daryl mourned the baby he never had. The baby he had chosen to be his. That he’d decided he would father.

He had done much like my own father had done to me. He hadn’t been blood either, but he’d decided, when I was just a baby, that he wanted to be my father. I think Daryl had no idea how much this meant to me. How deeply it had touched me that he had decided to father this boy he hadn’t made.

It hurt badly that he didn’t have the chance to go through with it. He still could, though, we still could, if one day we decided that –

_No._

_Fuck, no._

Like I’d been thrown into a freezing lake, the realization washed through me, freezing me to the boned.

We’d fucked a lot since yesterday. And not once we used protection.

_No._

That couldn’t happen. We couldn’t slip like this. Last night… This morning… We couldn’t take this chance. I couldn’t. I was panicking just to think of it. I couldn’t do it again. I wasn’t strong enough to face this again, no, I just couldn’t, _no no no_ …

My heart was pounding and my mouth was dry as I leaned against the tree with my arms crossed, the crossbow pressing on my back, but I fought not to let anything show in my expression. I didn’t want Daryl to think about it. I didn’t want him to worry or, maybe even worse, wish for it to happen. This was something I refused to go through again, so I’d have to deal with it.

“Mornin’, lovebird!”

I jumped, a hand going instantly to the knife handle on my waist, “Gee fuckin’ Christ, Merle!” and he just laughed, standing by my side, “D’you _wanna_ get stabbed?!”

“Why ya jumpy, hottie? Thought ya’d be _aaall_ nice and relaxed after all the lovin’ last night.”

“I am! But it’s still the walking dead end of the world out there, and please don’t be gross!”

“Why, didn’t my brother attack the pink fortress with a friendly weapon?” and he laughed aloud at his own terrible joke and receiving my punch in his arm.

“He did! Many times, not that you need to know that.”

“Yeah, I don’t need to hear about it.”

“Oh, now _you’re_ grossed out,” I said as I returned to my position and looked again at Daryl. He was just getting up from the ground.

“How’s he doin’?” Merle asked sensing the joking time was done. He was taking a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket. “Ya told him it all?”

“Yeah… It was a _looong_ talk. Not easy…”

“He’ll be fine. Tough man, my baby brother.”

“I’m tough too and I nearly died. This got nothing to do with being tough.”

Daryl was approaching us then, walking slowly from the grave, shoulders slumped in defeat but, as he approached, especially Merle, he straightened up and put on a brave face.

“Hey, little brother! Good hibbety-dibbety?”

I laughed but Daryl told him to shut up.

“Seriously, Merle,” I said even so, “Not here, alright?” I said pointing at Jack’s grave with my chin.

“Yeah, alright…” he said and lit up a cigarette, “Came to pick ya lovebirds up for lunch at Mich.”

“Good,” I said turning to start walking away, and they followed me. “Ran out of food at the house anyway.”

“Planning on goin’ huntin’ tomorrow, don’t ya worry. Hey, ya wanna join, baby brother?”

“Nah, not sure… Got stuff to do.”

“Daryl’s going back to the prison today,” I said quietly, sure I couldn’t hide the disappointment.

“ _What_? Ya just got’ere!”

“Got stuff to sort out there.”

“Yeah, ya go there, sort it the fuck out and come back. This were ya gotta be,” Merle said as he slapped Daryl’s back and I said nothing but caught myself nodding along. “Our own little group, as it was. Three of us gotta be together.”

“You damn right,” I said, “but don’t go puking rainbows on us, please, it’s embarrassing.”

Daryl laughed and Merle poked my side with a finger, making me jerk away, laughing with them. Damn, it was good to be with them both again!

“How’d you guys end up together again, anyway?” Daryl asked and, from then until we reached Michonne’s, Merle and I told him the story about him being a Woodbury soldier and then finding me and turning against the Governor. Daryl was nodding along, apparently satisfied with his older brother’s decisions.

Michonne’s house was on Circle Street, the same I lived in, by Andrea’s house on the corner. It was a two bedroom, but the outer area was the best part of her house. The porch was large, there was a garage space and even a barbecue grill in the yard. I had no doubts this place was going to become some sort of gathering space for the community.

Everyone was there except for, I counted the people in my mind quickly, Morales and Will, who were probably on guard at the moment. Mich was leaving the house to the porch carrying a pot and Andrea was sitting in one of the porch chairs right by Ma, who was there quietly and with a little satisfied smile even though she looked very tired. Mikki was extending a towel over the table and Michonne put the pot there as soon as she was done. Sasha and Tyreese were standing together by the porch steps, looking around with curiosity and Miranda was just approaching them to talk. Emma ran from the porch to meet us but she wasn’t even a little bit interested in us, just in Honey, who accepted her pettings gratefully, and her brother David was just arriving the house from the other side of the street, carrying two kitchen chairs with him.

Daryl was uncomfortable with all the unknown people when the three of us climbed the porch steps and joined the group. People received us with joy, like a family when a dear member arrives at a party. I caught Daryl’s stunned expression when he saw Merle lean down to give Ma a loud kiss on her cheek, making her laugh a little.

“Hey, glad you made it out of the honeymoon suite!” Andrea laughed at me as she came in for a hug.

She and Michonne teased Daryl and I about it nearly as much as Merle had, and it made Daryl find something else to do, his ears a bit red and a little timid smirk on his lips. I laughed seeing him go.

“Come on guys, you gotta have mercy on the man,” I told them both.

“Well, someone’s gotta, because I don’t think _you_ do!” Michonne laughed

“You’re damn right I don’t!” I laughed with them as I looked at Daryl at a distance. “Damn, can’t even believe this really happened.”

“It would someday or another,” Andrea said. “We need the others here now too.”

“Damn right,” I said firmly. “But I got a feeling Rick will not make this easy.”

“Rick can kiss my ass,” Andrea said and Michonne laughed at her.

“Isn’t someone else kissing your ass these days?” Michonne asked with eyebrows up.

Andrea blushed instantly and I laughed saying “Subtle, Mich, very subtle!”

“Well, I had to insert this question at some point, right?”

Andrea was still blushing but answered quietly, “Will’s been kissing way more than just my ass…”

I raised my arm in victory, “Yes! Finally!” making nearly everyone around stare at the three of us. “Oops,” I told them as we tried to disguise the conversation. Andrea was blushing furiously when the three of us got away from each other.

I headed to where Sasha and Tyrese were standing still alone, probably feeling just as outsiders as Daryl did now. This would change, though, for the three of them.

“Sasha!” I said approaching and pulling her to a hug. I notice she was a bit startled by the affection, but it was just how I liked to greet my people. They were all family and the siblings would become part of it, so I’d hug the hell out of them if I had to.

“Uh, hi, Sam!” she said finally hugging be back and I let her go.

“How you feeling?” I asked with my hands on her upper arms.

“Fine, I’m recovered.”

“Great… Thank you, Sasha, what you did was… Just, thank you.”

She smiled nodding.

“Tyrese, right?” I asked looking at him and he nodded, and then I hugged him too. He was a big guy, one of those guys who just _look_ like a nice person, “Sorry we didn’t have a chance to talk properly yet.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” he said patting my back. “It’s been busy days from what I see.”

I let him go laughing out a pff sound, “Tell me ‘bout it! How’ve you been?”

“Good,” Sasha answered with a smile, nodding but hugging her own arms. I could see she was still not comfortable, while her brother looked a bit more relaxed. “Michonne showed us the Village and helped us pick a house.”

“Which one d’you pick?”

“Uh, that,” Sasha pointed at the house across the street from Michonne’s, the infirmary neighbor.

“Nice one. And you’re staying together?”

She shared a somewhat confused look and Tyrese said “Uh… Yeah?”

“You know you can have one for each of you want to, right? If you pick one-bedroom ones you can each have your place. But I get it if it’s too soon to be alone. When we got here I holed up in a one-bedroom with Mich, Andrea and Merle until we felt safe enough to separate. What I mean is you can take your time and, if you want to, get your own place.”

“Oh?” Sasha said as they shared an impressed look. I could tell they were very close, understanding one another with just a look. “It’s just – It sounds a bit… Utopic?”

I laughed and reached a hand to briefly touch Sasha’s crossed arms, “It does, I know. But it is what it is. This is our Village and it’s _good_ , as strange as it sounds. But it takes work, it takes hard work, and a lot of fighting. If you’re both in, you gotta be in all the way. It’s how we make it work.”

“Oh, we’re in!” Sasha said with a little laugh, shaking her head with her eyebrows up.

“You can count on us,” Tyrese reaffirmed.

I slapped his arm then, “Great. Welcome to the Village!”

They seemed a little more relaxed when I left them. I looked around and saw Daryl standing with Michonne near the table as they talked. Glad he was not alone, I looked around for Miranda and found her checking on Ma as she talked to Mikki. I approached and asked her if we could speak a little to the side.

“Que es eso, mija?” she asked worriedly. I didn’t understand her words, but I got the feeling.

“Do we… Uh – In that box of meds we brought from the drugstore… Did we have pills?”

She lowered her voice, “Birth control?”

“Yes. Do we have it?”

“Si, but not a lot. I think you’d be good for like… Six months?”

“It that all we have? Others might need it too…”

“Oh, Andrea already got a few boxes for herself. You can have the rest. There were also a few packs of condoms but I think someone’s been taking them…”

“Good. Okay, I’ll take the pills then… But uh…”

“Si?”

“Is there any… The, uh, morning after ones?”

“Oh,” she said understanding. “In fact, yes. I think two or three of them.”

I breathed out in relief, “Oh, ok. Good… Good. But I’ll need just one, right?”

“Yes. One is enough. But you should take it as soon as possible. I’ll go get it to you, don’t worry.”

“I just don’t want anybody to see… To know… Especially him,” I said nodding in Daryl’s general direction, “okay?”

“No te preocupes, mija.”

I was relieved when she moved away from me, knowing I’d dodge that bullet. I knew the hormones on the morning after pill would fuck me up a little, especially since I had just gone out of the post-partum bleedings and stuff less than two months ago. I stopped thinking about it then, it was not a phase I wanted to keep thinking about.

I moved around a little more before joining Daryl again. Damn, how was it possible that I’d _missed_ him in those minutes I wasn’t around him? I glued myself to his side, making him wrap an arm around me.

“Hey, sorry…”

“’S fine,” he said gently, looking down at me. “You’re the leader, you gotta talk to people.”

I smiled up at him and raised on my tiptoes to give him a quick peck on the lips. People started eating then from the rabbit stew Michonne had ready at the table. It was a good moment, everyone eating and talking and drinking from a terrible tasting powdered juice. Our group was bigger now. Only two weren’t there at the moment, but we were a total of fourteen people and yes, I was already counting Daryl.

Short after eating, Daryl told me had to go. I put up a brave face like it didn’t bother me but I it, it fucking did. I wasn’t even sure why it bothered me so much. Other than not having him here at the Village and with me for a few hours after having _just_ found him, I had no reasons to be worried. Right? It wasn’t like Rick would force him to stay there or convince him of it or plant ideas in his head, because Daryl was a smart man, he wasn’t easy to fool… But Rick could still try. And that’s what bothered me. I didn’t want Daryl to need to be in a position between Rick and I, the prison and the Village. Everything could be so much simpler...

I walked with Daryl to the gate and we stopped still inside.

“Do you know what you’re gonna tell him?” I asked and I knew I had to be careful with my wording. I couldn’t just say that Daryl could not stay in the prison. I wanted him to leave that place and move here, but I couldn’t make the decision for him. He had to decide it for himself.

“Not sure… But I’ll try to get them all to come.”

“I don’t see why they wouldn’t.”

“Yeah…” he said nodding slowly, eyes wandering around. “But Rick…” and he stopped, not feeling the need to finish the sentence.

“Yeah, I know. Not in his right mind.”

“No. Hey…” he made me look up at him and held my face tenderly in his hand. “We’ll figure this out. Been through worse.”

“I know,” I tried to say it naturally. “M’not worried.”

“Yes, you are.”

 _Damn, Daryl_.

“Fine, I am. It’s just – I have this feeling.”

“I know. I’ll talk to him.”

“Ok…” and I looked down and took one step closer to him, standing near his chest, raising my hands to it. “Just… Come back, ok?”

He enveloped me in a hug, my arms trapped between us, and lowered a kiss to my hair.

“I will.”

We just hugged to a few more seconds before he let go, gave me a quick kiss on the lips and started moving away, walking to the gate. I stood where I was, watching him do, but still talked to him.

“You’re walking there? You can take a car of you want.”

He turned a little to look at me, “I’ll walk. Wanna come back with the bike later,” and turned again to continue on his way.

“Right. Just don’t die out there, ok? Watch out for people…”

“I won’t,” he said instinctively but then stopped and turned to fully look at me. “You too. Don’t die.”

“I’ll be right here.”


	49. Day 312, part 2

My shoulders slumped and my smile was gone as soon as the gate was closed after the passed through it. Shit, I was gonna miss him like a teenager in love… I lowered my head to rest it in a hand, my mind in a turmoil.

“Yeah, I know the feeling!” Merle was saying as he approached coming up the street.

I turned and started walking in his direction, back down the street, “Let’s go back to Mich, we need to talk.”

Not five minutes later, I was in Michonne’s living room with her, Andrea and Merle, the others still outside enjoying the last minutes of the lunch gathering. I told them what Daryl had said about Rick, about him not being well, about what he told me at the prison saying we’d need to talk about my invitation for them all to move to the Village, and what my concerns were.

“It’s about what happened with Shane,” Andrea said after I finished, “isn’t it?”

I slumped down the couch. “Yeah. It’s totally about what happened with Shane.”

“It’s _not_ happening again,” Michonne told me firmly, protectiveness clear on her voice.

“You didn’t see that coming,” Andrea said from across the living room. “None of us did. We’ll keep an eye for it now.”

“We should’ve seen it coming, Andrea. _Me_! I should’ve seen it coming. The signs were all there and I was uneasy with him, but no, I didn’t see it coming.”

“Rick doesn’t seem to be like Shane,” she insisted.

“Rick might as well be _exactly_ like Shane,” Merle opined as he sat on top of the kitchen counter. “Never trusted him, never will. For me, he’s still the same sonofabitch who handcuffed me to a pipe and left me behind. The reason I had to cut off my own motherfuckin’ hand.”

I was nodding, my mind running fast, and as I spoke, I got to a few conclusions I hadn’t yet. “Yeah. He did that because you were a stone on his path. He was on a mission to find his family and the thought you’d stand on his way. So he removed you,” there was a tense silence after I said that when we all shared looks, and I continued, “Exactly like Shane did to me.”

“We’ll be safer if we don’t trust him from the beginning,” Michonne said from my side on the couch.

“We’ll have to keep a close eye on him. I’ll need you guys. I’ll need to know you got my back. To watch him closely, ‘cause I’m –” and I stopped to huff a breath out, shaking my head. “’Cause I didn’t see it coming the first time, Daryl didn’t see it coming either. It can’t happen again.”

“You got it,” Michonne agreed promptly.

“We always got your back, you know it,” Andrea reaffirmed.

“I’ll slice the sonofabitch to tiny pieces if he as much as looks at ya the wrong way!” Merle was slightly cruder.

I laughed a little at that as I rested my elbows on my knees, hands clasped together. “Good… That’s good to hear.”

“What’s gonna happen now?” Michonne questioned.

“Not sure. I want the whole group to move here, it’s where they should be. But if they all come, Rick will come too and he’ll be living inside our walls. But I’ll have him if it’s what it takes for the others to come. He wouldn’t stay at the prison alone with his children, he’s got a one-week-old baby, for fuck’s sakes! He’ll only stay if the group stays, and I don’t want that.”

“Some of them might come,” Andrea said. “The option is open.”

“It is, and I told them that clearly. Carol is coming, probably with Daryl when he comes back. Not sure about the others…”

“But you want them all,” Michonne affirmed.

“I want them all,” I said firmly. “It’s not many people, they’re, what, ten, nine? A teenager, a child, a newborn and an elder. I mean, why the fuck would they just _choose_ to live in a prison instead of in a real Village?” they all nodded in agreement. “The fact is we’ll have to wait now, see what Daryl tells me when he comes back. He’s gonna try to talk to Rick. If they still don’t wanna come, I’ll go there myself, and if they still don’t… Well, then fuck it, they can stay there. I ain’t forcing anyone to come.”

They all agreed with nods and started moving to leave the house, but I stopped them.

“There’s something else”, they stopped. “Daryl told me something that’s… _Important_ that we’re all aware,” I looked at them for a moment. “We’re all infected. We don’t have to get bit to turn after dying. Natural causes, accidents… We all turn.”

* * *

Miranda was out there waiting for me to come out of the house. She nodded to call me and I moved to her, away from others. She handed me a small pack with a single pill in it and I pocketed it quickly.

“Be careful, ok?” she told me. “If we didn’t have any of it…”

“I know. It was reckless. Won’t happen again.”

She just nodded with a little smile and left me. I looked around trying to decide if I had to do something else before going home, and I saw David and Emma sitting together on the porch steps, apparently silent. Honey was there, laying in the path in front of them, taking a nap. I went down the steps passing by them.

“Hey guys!” I said as I stood in front of them. “Did you enjoy lunch?”

“We did,” David answered. “It was nice. Got to see everyone.”

“What about you?” I asked Emma. “Did you have a good time?”

She nodded timidly, “There’s a lot of people.”

“We weren’t used to it,” David explained. “It was just us for the last few days, and even before, we were just five people. I guess she’s just a little overwhelmed.”

“I get it. But it’s better with more people, don’t you think?”

She moved her shoulders up, “I guess…”

“It is,” I affirmed. “You’ll get used to it, and you’ll like it,” and she just nodded quietly. “Where are you two staying?” I asked looking at David.

“We were with the Morales’. They’re really nice.”

“They are the best, aren’t they?” and at their nod, I continued, “And now?”

“They said we could stay with them if we wanted… But there’s not much space in their house, and I don’t want to make them move, they’re all settled there. So we’ll be moving somewhere else, choose a place with two bedrooms,” and he looked sideways at his little sister, “We’ll be fine. Right?”

She looked up at him with a smile too, “Yeah.”

“You will, I’m sure. I’ll be here if you need help picking a house.”

“Miranda says she’ll help,” Emma was the one to answer this time, and then surprised me with a question, “Are you the mayor of this town?”

I laughed, exchanging a look with David, “Mayor? No, it’s not like that… Towns don’t have mayors anymore. Groups have leaders, and that’s what I am, the leader of this group.”

“But…” she started and paused as if she knew she maybe shouldn’t say whatever she was going to say. But she did anyway, and her tone showed innocent confusion, “But you’re a girl.”

Oh, I see.

“Yes, I’m a woman. And I am the leader,” I affirmed but tried to keep gentle.

“Women can be leaders, Emma,” David tried by her side.

“But daddy always said women were supposed to take care of the husbands,” she tried to rebate her brother and looked back at me. “Is that man your husband?”

“He – uh,” damn, how to answer that? “That man is Daryl; he is my boyfriend. And my _partner_.”

“So isn’t _he_ the leader?”

“No, Emma,” I said firmly. “ _I am_ the leader.”

“Mom and Dad were church rats,” David explained. “But more than that, dad had very… Specific... Strict thoughts,” and he turned to his sister. “We’ve talked about it, Emma… Not everything they said was true.”

“Daddy didn’t lie! Lying is a sin, he wouldn’t lie!”

Holy fuck, that shit went deep! Did I even have the energy for that?

“I don’t think your dad was lying, Emma. Listen to me. To lie is when you know something but you say different on purpose. I think he believed everything he said to you, and so did your mom. The only problem was that they were wrong. They weren’t lying, they were just wrong, and it’s okay to be wrong sometimes. You can learn new things, learn what they didn’t have the chance to learn when they were your age. Do you get it?”

“Everything has changed, Emma,” Davis continued my thought, clearly agreeing with me. “If mom and dad were here, they would probably start seeing things differently. They’d understand girls can be leaders and can fight and protect other people. I know you can do it too, just like Sam does”.

“I’ll help you if you let me. We all will. I’ll teach you all I know about fighting, helping others, about all the things girls can do. I’m sure your mom would be happy to see her little girl being capable and strong.”

Emma said nothing but looked up at me with large, round tearful eyes, and then she nodded. Seeing that, David hugged her sideways and looked at me with a thankful look.

Something happened in my heart then and I wanted to hug her, gather her in my arms, shush her and say everything would be alright. To take care of her.

What the fuck was _that_?

* * *

I took a nap in the late afternoon. It was dark when I work up.

I had no idea how many _years_ it’d been since I took a _nap in the afternoon_. Dam, it’d been a long, long time and it felt weird like I was leaving my duties behind, like I was slacking off, even though I knew I’d gone through a trauma and needed that rest. I felt rested and relaxed when I got up, but I felt _guilty._ And it sucked.

I’d taken a few new food cans with me when I came back home after the gathering and I was sprawled on the couch with Honey eating soup out of one of them when heavy steps climbed to the front porch. Honey barked once and got off the couch but seemed to instantly recognize it wasn’t a threat, wagging her tail staring at the door just as Merle spoke from outside.

“Come on out, Gaia, Aunt Mary comes to visit!” he said and knocked just once on the door, but didn’t come in. I got up from the couch and opened the door, letting Honey out, to see Merle sitting down on the front steps.

“Done for today?” I asked as I stood above him, arms crossed.

“Yeah, got the night off.”

“All good?”

“Peachy,” he said as he lit up a joint. “No movement on the roads ‘cept for stray walkers.”

“Hm…” and I sat by his side on the top step. “And why you don’t sound satisfied by that? It’s Woodbury, right?”

“Woodbury,” he said in a strained voice, holding the smoke in his lungs. He blew it out after a moment and tried passing me the joint, but I extended a hand to deny it.

“Not tonight,” I explained. “Waiting for Daryl to come back and then we’ll pro’ly gonna have a talk about Rick and stuff. Maybe later,” and Merle accepted the explanation, quietly taking another pull. “Tell me about security schedules.”

He did, letting me know tonight he had Morales on the platform, Michonne and Mikki rounding the side and back walls, and he was testing Tyrese along the front wall, and had Morales keep an eye on him. It seemed all good. Merle kept on smoking by my side in silence after that. I lit up a cigarette and waited for him to say whatever he wanted to say because one just doesn’t push Merle Dixon to speak if he doesn’t want to.

“What you think my brother’s gonna think ‘bout it?” he started after a while. “’Bout Mikki bein’ my girl?”

I fought hard not to react. Merle hadn’t told me that yet. I knew he was confused about her, about things he’d been feeling, but he’d never spoken about it ever since. I did catch them near each other, speaking quietly, and Mikki had been very comfortable to enter his house when we went in to get the razor from his bathroom, but it had all been only speculations.

“You’re worried ‘bout his reaction?” I asked as if I had not just been surprised.

“If Daryl’s anything like I was... Thinks anything like I used to think –”

“He ain’t,” I interrupted to tell him firmly. “He don’t. And you know that. You know Daryl’s always been different from you.”

“Yeah… Always been the good one. The quiet one.”

“He’s got a huge heart, Merle. Even if you couldn’t understand it before… You can know. He’s open-minded. He won’t judge you for that. Ain’t nothing to judge you for,” and I poked his arm to make him look at me. His eyes were already a bit puffy, but he didn’t seem to be high yet, “’cause there ain’t nothing wrong with your relationship with Mikki. _Nothing_ , ya hear me?”

“Know that… _Now_ I know that. But it ain’t like it’s just turn off a button and ol’Will’s voice’s gonna disappear from my head, and he lowered his head, shaking it slowly. “It’s fucked up…”

“Well if he ain’t gonna shut up at least tell him to go fuck himself. Maybe it’s what he needed. Meet a girl like Mikki to put an end to all his narrow-minded prejudices. You’re better than him, Merle. You fuckin’ win.”

He was silent for a moment and then he repeated, “I fuckin’ win.”

I slapped him hard in the back then, raiding my voice, desiring the melancholic moment to be over, “You fuckin’ win!!” I shouted and he laughed out loud at that, “I’m happy for you, Merle. But why didn’t you tell me before?”

“Ain’t told nobody yet. Mikki wanted to wait. She’d had some shitty relationships before, motherfuckers fucked her around. She wanted to be sure this time.”

“You weren’t ready either.”

“Nope. We are now.”

I said nothing just kept looking at him sideways with a wide smile on my face. Damn, I was happy for him!

We both heard at the same time as the deep rumble of a motor cut the silence of the night coming from somewhere to our left and slowly getting louder. I breathed out, relieved. Daryl was coming home.

“Damn, I missed that song!” Merle said getting up from the steps just as Daryl appeared in front of the house with the bike. “My sweetass ape-hanger!

My heart gave a somersault inside my chest as if I hadn’t spent the last day with him like I was just seeing him for the first time again. And well, of course, because he looked fucking _eatable_ on that bike.

“ _Your?_ ” I asked as I joined them on the sidewalk and Daryl hopped off. “Man, this ship has sailed. She’s moved on to the next men!”

“To the better men, more like it,” Daryl said from the other side of the bike. He had the vest on. Oh, the angel vest…

“Fuck you talkin’ about? That’s my bike right there!”

“You gave up on it when you,” and I raised my voice, “ _didn’t wait on the roof!_ ”

Daryl laughed in surprise at my comment, impressed that we could actually joke about such a traumatic situation.

“Ah, fuck off, it always gonna circle back to _that_?” he asked as he held on to the handlebar of the bike, looking it over.

“Always!” I said.

“Yeah, can’t ride one-handed anyway,” he said a little bummed but raised his voice again as he started stepping away. “Ya can keep it, little brother, consider it a gift!”

“Yeah, thanks!” Daryl said as he came to stand by my side.

“Ya take good care of her I’ll even let ya keep the vest!”

“I’ll beat ya ass if you try to take the vest!” I yelled after him as he left, laughing up the street.

Then Daryl and I turned and just like that we were clutching each other, arms hugging and embracing, lips crashing together. He lifted me as if I weighed nothing, I wrapped my legs around his waist and he started walking blindly to the house. I saw nothing on the way there, I was just clinging to him, kissing him all over and next thing I knew he was dropping on the couch and kept on kissing me back.

“Fuck, I missed you,” I said between kisses, my hands already under his shirt reaching his chest. He was warm and sweaty and _here_ , and I suppose the _here_ part was never going to cease to amaze me.

“I missed you too, baby,” he whispered against my neck. “Don’t wanna have you outta my sight.”

“Then don’t… Just don’t. Just stay.”

He held my face between his hands and made me look down at him for a moment, our lips parted and swollen. After a moment he lowered my forehead to his, thumbs caressing my cheeks, and whispered, “I’ll stay.”

I moved back a little to look at him, smiling, “Yeah?”

“Yeah. Wherever you are.”

I laughed in joy. This was it, this was where he belonged and he saw it. He wanted to be here too, as much as I wanted him with me, here at the Village. We kissed again, calmly this time, and for a long, long time. When we let go, I stayed right where I was and he rested his back on the couch, letting his head fall on the cushion.

“What of the others?” I asked.

“They ain’t sure what to do,” Daryl started to explain. “Rick says we gone through hell to made the prison a safe place to be, that they shouldn’t just leave now after everything.”

I thought for a moment before saying, “I can kinda see his point… But that was before when there was no other option. They have an option now.”

“They gotta come here,” Daryl said, his hands resting on my thigh, absently traveling up and down. “See it with their own eyes…”

“Yeah, I guess it’ll help. What did Rick say when you told him you’re staying here?”

He lowered his eyes at my question, “Wasn’t happy. Kept saying that was family, that we gone through a lot together, that he needs me there.”

“Well, what of all the things _you and I_ went through together? That don’t count?”

“At this point, I don’t think so.”

“He’s trying to make you feel guilty,” I said in realization. “And successfully, from that I see.”

“Ain’t that simple…”

“I know. I know damn well it ain’t,” I slid off his lap and sat on the couch by his side, “but as long as I know Rick’s hesitation is for fear of losing the leadership, and not for real concerns for the group, I won’t be able to accept that.”

“I know. It’s why I’m telling you it ain’t simple. The man’s messed up, like he’s losing everything, lost his best friend, his wife, some friends, feels like he's losing _me_ in the group, and then he’ll lose the place he fought to secure and his job too. It’s fuckin’ up with his head.”

Observant. Yes, here was the observant, intelligent man I knew.

“I get it, but… I don’t get it, Daryl! It’s like he ain’t never lost anything in his life before. We all lost things, we all lost people, including him. I think it’s more about his ego than the fear of loss. Exactly like Shane.”

“Rick ain’t like Shane.”

“He might as well be!” I raised my voice and jumped from the couch to stand there in the living room. “I lost everything once because of a man’s hurt masculinity,” I said with a shaky voice. “ _Everything_! I ain’t going through that again. I’m getting _my people_ back because that’s what they all are, they’re _my people_ from the beginning, since the road to Atlanta when Rick was still in a fuckin’ coma having no idea what was happenin’.”

“Do you gotta be that extreme?” he was also pissed. “Can’t you work somethin’ out with him? I’ve told him that I’ll live here but he can count on me for whatever he needs. It don’t gotta be either here or there!”

“D’you really think he’d be flexible enough to do it?” I asked crossing my arms.

“Don’t know if he would and for what I see, don’t know ‘bout _you_ , either.”

That shut me the fuck up. My own voice repeating _my people, my people_ echoed in my head and I heard them the way he heard them.

And I didn’t like it.

“I need to think,” I told him in a defeated voice and opened the door to leave the house. Before rushing down the steps I bent down to take my pack of cigarettes that I’d left on the floor before, and went to the street, walking in the opposite way of Main Street.

In the silence, I could only hear my steps hitting the asphalt heavily and realized I was walking fast and irritated. So I stopped right there, in the middle of the street, closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Looking around I realized I was in the deserted area of the Village where nobody lived yet, near the back hedge. Overgrowth was starting to get to the street in that area, wed need to clean it soon, lots of dry leaves too. I lit up a cigarette, took a pull and looked up, blowing the smoke away as I looked up at the sky.

I couldn’t have everything the way I wanted and I had experience in that. My whole life things had not been the way I wanted and I should be used to that. I’d always been capable of adapting to the curve balls life sent me, so why did I think I’d have to be different now? I couldn’t try to impose my wishes, if I started to do that as a leader there would be no way back. That was not the kind of leader and person that I wanted to be.

And I couldn’t just walk away from Daryl as I’d done just minutes ago! What the fuck was I thinking? We had a disagreement, we’d had them before and we would still have many of them in the future, and this that I’d done, just leaving him in the middle of it? That couldn’t happen.

So I turned around and ran back home. If we were going to fight, we’d have to fight together. But he’d been right, and now we had no reason to keep fighting. Daryl was right about everything.

He was in the house by the living room window, resting his elbows on the window sill, smoking as he looked out to the darkened woods. I closed the door quietly behind me and he turned his head a little to see me there but looked out again. I stood where I was.

“I’m sorry,” I said quietly. Daryl silently put off the cigarette on the old metal ashtray I had on the window sill and turned around, leaning his hips against the wall to look at me. I fidgeted a little, my fingers tracing the edge of the cabinet by the door, my eyes following its movements. “Shouldn’t just walk away like this when we disagree on somethin’…” and I looked up at him to find his eyes held no anger, no irritation. He was just letting me speak, but I could see he’d already accepted my apology. “You’re right. I can’t be like that… I gotta accept whatever they decide and try to make the best out of it. They ain’t _my people_ … Not Rick’s people either. They’re their own people and will make their own decision, I don’t wanna force anything on them,” and I looked down again, taking a deep breath. “And I hope I didn’t impose this decision on you. You know… Insisting you to stay.”

He shot out of the window and was in front of me in an instant, “You didn’t,” he said firmly, one hand on my upper arm and the other on the side of my neck, holding my face up to look at him. “My mind was made the moment Merle told me you were alive. There was nothin’ to even think about.”

“Yeah?” I asked with a nod and a small voice. “This where you wanna be?”

He took one more step closer to his face so close to mine I could feel his breath. He rubbed his nose on mine from side to side.

“Stop with the crazy talk, woman. ‘Course it’s where I wanna be.”

I breathed out a laugh in relief just as he pressed a kiss to my lips, hugging me tight against his chest. I raised a hand to his face and up to run my fingers into his hair as I kissed him back, and as he sighed into my kiss and held on to my waist harder, fingertips burying into my skin, I remembered something else we needed to talk about.

“Daryl…” I said against his lips.

He just hummed as he spread his kisses on my cheek and then lower to my neck, as I was quickly starting to feel week in the legs.

“I took a morning-after pill today.”

I hadn’t planned on telling him that. Why would I worry him about it if it had been taken care of? But we’d need to wear from now on until I started taking the daily pills, to make sure nothing would happen, so it would come up anyway. Daryl stopped his kisses to look at me, wordless.

“We never had to worry about it before…” I told him and my eyes lowered at that because the reason we never had to worry about it was that I’d been pregnant before. “And we really didn’t worry about it at all yesterday… Or this morning.”

“I’m… I’m sorry. I should’ve…”

I looked up at him again, “Yeah, but I should too. Yesterday was…” and I shook my head with a smile, “too special to stop and think ‘bout anythin’ else. I wouldn’t change a thing.”

With a somewhat defeated sigh, Daryl lowered his forehead to mine, arms still around me. “Sorry…”

“Don’t worry. We just have to be careful now. I’ll get on the pill when I can but gotta wait a couple of weeks. Until then…”

“It’s gonna take a whole truckload o’ condoms,” he said with a smirk, his nose sliding against mine right before he kissed me again, hard, and dragged me back to the couch where we’d finally be able to finish what we’d started earlier.


	50. Day 313

The Village had a large area that was surrounded by Circle Street, the pond right in the middle, enclosed by a thick, yet small patch of woods. A few of the houses at Circle Street had their backs to the lake and wooded area, such as our house, from where we could simply open the bedroom or the kitchen window and stare right at them. It was a nice and quiet view, one of the reasons I’d picked that exact house. I liked the quiet.

Now, the only sound I could hear was our careful, nearly silent footsteps as we lurked among the trees, not even breathing aloud. My crossbow cocked and armed as I pointed it upwards, carefully eyeing the bark of a hickory. My feet came to a halt when movement caught my eyes, Daryl stopping instantly a little behind me. Just a couple of weeks into spring, the woods in and around the Village had been buzzing with life, finally. Squirrels were everywhere, birds of all the types found in Georgia blooming, the fruit trees around the lake flowering. After the mildest winter I had even been through, the temperatures were rising a bit more and it was time to hunt, grow food, gather, make this community bloom.

There was the squirrel I had seen, sitting in a branch as if rubbed its adorable face with both paws. Cute, but I wanted to eat it. Taking a slow, calming breath, I focused on the aim and, after a second of silence, pulled the trigger. The arrow passed right behind it, inches away, making the animal startle and run away disappearing like a lightning bolt.

“Goddamnit!” I barked under my breath as I lowered the crossbow. “The fuck am I doin’ wrong?”

“You held it up too long,” Daryl explained as he approached me. “Took a toll on your shoulder. Hurts, don’t it?”

I held the crossbow only with my left hand and rolled my right shoulder back, twisting my neck at the same time. “Yeah. Started trembling a little, feels weak.”

‘Give it a rest as we find another. Aim up only when you get visual and shoot fast.”

I lowered the bow to the ground, placing my foot on the hook before pressing my left hand on my right shoulder, strongly pushing it back. It popped loudly as if it hadn’t been in the right place before, even though it hadn’t been dislocated for days. It sent a jolt of electricity down my arm, but not in a bad way. As Daryl was away trying to find the bolt I had wasted, I bent down to cock the crossbow, pulling the string up with both hands. As I put an arrow in place to arm it again, I looked for Daryl with my eyes. He was a few feet away, a hand in the bark of a tree, looking up. I approached quietly, maybe he’d seen another squirrel.

“It’s a maple,” he told me when I approached. “Southern sugar. We can try to get some sap out of it.”

“Make syrup?” I asked as I stopped by his side, also looking at the tree. He hummed in confirmation. “You know how to do that?”

“Just gotta punch a hole,” he said as he gestured a finger on the bark, “and put in some sorta pipe of straw and it will come right off. Then just boil the hell out of it and you got syrup.”

“Damn, you sure know a whole lotta things, don’t you?”

He smirked as he looked sideways and down at me, “You pick up a few things in the woods,” he explained.

Movement caught our attention again and we turned to look towards the pond to see another squirrel running up the bark of a tree. We approached it carefully, both looking up to try and locate it.

“See it?” Daryl asked me as his own eyes found the animal.

“Yeah,” I whispered as I held the crossbow in both hands ready to lift it to aim, but Daryl placed a hand on it, gently pressing it down.

“It’s carrying,” he explained at my questioning look and I looked up again to see it. He was right, it was not just a fatty squirrel, it was a pregnant one. I was glad Daryl had seen it before I could shoot.

We walked around the woods a little more, always in silence to try to locate at least one more game so I could practice my shoulder with the bow, and not over ten minutes later it pulled off. The squirrel was eating something on a medium height branch as we stopped looking up at it.

“Just position it…” Daryl whispered from somewhere behind me. I couldn’t see him but his presence was solid. I held the crossbow pointing to the ground, my right hand fingering the trigger, “breathe,” he reminded me and I let go of the air I’d been holding in my lungs, “and don’t hesitate, just lift, aim and shoot, no thinkin’.”

I took another second to breathe again and then did exactly as he told me. Lifted it, aimed and shot. And the poor little thing fell to the ground with my arrow pierced right through its body.

“Yes! Nice shot!” he celebrated behind me as I laughed and lowered the crossbow, letting it rest on the ground. As he passed by me on his way to retrieve the squirrel, I lifted a hand with my palm up and he slapped it with his. He bent to take it and held it up by the arrow. “Fuck, it looked hot!”

“Now you know how I feel,” I poked my tongue at him and saw immediate effect, his smirk now accompanied by slightly barred teeth.

Before he could reach me, though, the radio on my waist broke the silence and the spell.

“Ground control to Major Tom,” Merle slurred as he tried to imitate Bowie. I laughed at him and was grateful he’s started by trying to be funny. It was his way of letting everyone who was listening know that he wasn’t calling to report any problem, we could all be calm. The last few interactions we’d had through the radio had not been for the best of reasons. I took the radio from the back of my waistband and pressed the button as I smiled up at Daryl, who had stood very close to me.

“This is Major Tom to ground control!”

“Got some prison buddies at the gate if ya wanna come say hi.”

I shared a surprised look with Daryl as I said, “Who’s there?”

“I see the Sheriff, short-haired lady, china boy and the chick from Woodbury.”

“You’re gonna have to learn their names, Merle.”

We took less than five minutes to get to the gate and it was only that long because I couldn’t walk too fast with my wounded thigh. From the corner of Main Street, I could see a car that wasn’t ours parked in the middle of the street and a few people by it. As we got closer, Daryl leveling his steps with mine, I saw Rick, Carol, Glenn and Maggie as they talked to Morales and Andrea while Merle stood observing a little behind.

I hadn’t seen Glenn and Maggie the day I’d woken up at the prison. They’d been convalescing too, so this was the first time I really saw them except for the rescue at Woodbury. It was great seeing them well, even if Glenn’s face still sported a few bruises like mine did. I hurried a little the last few steps as Maggie came to my encounter, an emotional smile on her face, arms open. We just hugged tight and smile widely at each other when we let go.

“You okay?” I asked her.

“I am!” she said with a nod and then looked down on me, green eyes fixing on my shoulder and then lower to my leg. “You?”

“Oh, honey, I’m great!” I said with a laughter just as Glenn came up right next, also with a smile, “Hey there, pizza boy!” I said as I pulled him to a hug.

“Happy to see you in a good environment, Sam!” Glenn said as he hugged me back.

“Although I was damn happy to see you in that not so calm environment,” Maggie completed.

“You should’ve seen her,” Glenn said as he let me go, speaking to everyone around, “kicking the door open and screaming _come at me motherfucker_!” and he adorably blushed for saying those words.

“Add that to the fact it was someone we thought to be dead, you get the picture,” Maggie completed him.

“Yeah, I gotta admit I kinda did it on purpose,” I told them, my smile large on my face. “I knew it’d be cool as fuck!”

Carol was there by our side, a sweet smile on her face and I turned to hug her next.

“You’re staying?” I asked her in a whisper.

“I am,” she affirmed simply.

I squeezed her a little tighter at that, “Good,” I said but the word didn’t reflect how happy I was about that.

I still wasn’t sure about the others, the cars didn’t seem to be packed and most of the group wasn’t even here now, so I knew there was still some discussion to happen. But I was happy that Carol, at least, had her mind made. We let go and shared a look. She nodded firmly at me, still smiling, and I knew I had her on my team, I’d always had. I didn’t know what Carol was capable of doing now after all these months after being hurt and hardened by the loss of Sophia – her image coming out of the barn and me stabbing her in the brain under Carol’s desperate cries would never leave my mind. It didn’t matter, though. I just wanted her to be _fine_ , whatever she could bring into this group would be just perfect.

Then I hugged Rick too, not that I particularly wanted to but I was being friendly to him. It didn’t matter what I thought could happen, the stones he could put on the group’s path. For now, I was going to try to build bridges. But I did meet Merle’s eyes from over Rick’s shoulder, and Daryl’s, who was standing by his brother.

“So, you’re here?” I affirmed and questioned at the same time, wondering.

“Yeah,” Rick said in that slow way he spoke, hands resting on his hips. “Daryl told us some things about your community,” he said looking sideways to find Daryl and then back at me. And of course I did not miss how he said ‘ _your_ ’, “Thought we’d pay a visit, see the place?”

“Sure! You know you’re always welcome here,” I said looking at each one of them. “You didn’t get to see a lot when you were here, right?”

“No, just stayed right about here before leaving.”

“Alright, we’ll walk around. Just gimme a second.”

I pushed past him and limped a little to where Merle and Daryl were waiting and stood with my back to the others, “You got the platform?” I asked as I looked up at Merle and he nodded, arms crossed. “Who’s on rounds?”

“Michonne’s got north and east,” he said pointing in the general direction with his chin, “Will’s got south and front wall. David’s with Mich, she trainin’ him for rounds.”

I was nodding, “How long ‘til the end of the shift?”

“”Bout one more hour.”

“Right, you keep it up ‘n I’ll want the three of you to meet us all at Mich’s for a meeting, okay? Get both Morales’ to go too.”

“You got it, boss!” Merle said out loud as he uncrossed his arms and turned around to go back to the platform. “See ya’ll later, inmates!” he shouted over his shoulder with his knifed stump up in the air.

I looked at Daryl and with just a nod asked him to stay with me while I walked around with the others, and he agreed nodding back. As I turned around, I was surprised by a crutch shoved in my face. Started, I took one step back.

“What the hell?” I asked when I understood it was Miranda holding it up for me to take it.

“A crutch, what does it look like?” she asked me.

“I don’t need a crutch,” I said firmly. “I didn’t even remember we had that!”

“Well, now you do; use it!” Miranda ordered lifting it to my face again.

“Oh, come on!” I caught myself whining. “I don’t wanna use it…”

“ _Pero tienes que usarlo_ ,” she insisted. “You’ve been walking around on a wounded muscle, can’t put too much strain in it. _Ay, no seas tan terca_!”

I breathed out loudly, rolling my eyes stubbornly. I did not want to use the thing, but said “Fine!” as I took it. At least it was an elbow crutch, not one of the big armpit ones. The others had amused faces when I look at them, testing my weight in the crutch, “And they said _I’m_ the leader! Pff!”

* * *

I had to give in and admit Miranda had been right, the crutch did well for me. With Daryl always by my side, both of us with our crossbows hanging on our backs, I guided Rick, Carol, Maggie and Glenn down Main Street, pointing to show where each person lived, much like I’d done to Daryl when he got here. Before we turned left on Circle Street, I showed them where the infirmary was and summarized how it worked, and then showed where Andrea lived, and then Michonne. One empty lot after Michonne’s, there was another street turning left, with two houses on each side of the street and one where it finished in a cul-de-sac.

“If you keep on after the end of the street to the woods, it’s where the water mine with the pump are,” I said pointing ahead with the crutch.

“How does the pump work?” Glenn was curious.

“It’s a pressure pump, don’t need electricity. And that’s how far my knowledge of this goes, Mikki can explain better. All I know is that it works and it’s got no reason to stop workin’ anytime soon.”

“So this means freshwater in the houses?” Carol asked.

“Yeah, and it’s drinkable. And the toilets flush.”

Keeping walking down Circle Street, a few yards away, there was another street, nearly identical to the first one, but the houses here were a bit bigger. The street looked pretty, the trees on the sidewalks flowering even though the asphalt was dirty with earth and leaves. We moved on down Circle Street, getting now close to the back hedge, where the houses were a bit sparser, empty lots that could’ve received new constructions someday.

We entered the woods there, heading towards the pond among the trees and stopped there. The other four were quiet, looking around and I could feel they were impressed, I could sense how much Maggie and Glenn were enjoying what they saw. They had shared a long look on the last street we’d been to – I decided I’d name the streets since Main and Circle were already determined.

“Is there any fish in this pond?” Rick asked, not moving his eyes from it.

“Not sure,” I answered from where Daryl and I were standing together a little behind them. “Still didn’t take the time to try and catch anything, but I do see some movement in the water sometimes.”

“It’s beautiful here,” Maggie said quietly.

I could see what she meant. It was not a large pond, nor was it _that_ beautiful, but in a world like we had these days, the place looked like an oasis. In the mornings during the winter we’d just got out of, there would be fog rising from the water and it was so quiet it was easy to pretend the world hadn’t ended.

Moving on, we walked through the woods until we got to the back of mine and Daryl’s house.

“Gas canisters?” Maggie asked eyeing the yellowish one under the kitchen window.

“Yeah, the houses people’d lived in had’em already, like this one, but most don’t. It’s pro’ly nearly empty by now, we’re gonna have to find more somewhere or start using fire burners.”

“Is this where you live?”

“Yeah! Come on, I show you in,” I said as we all rounded the house and them reached the front steps.

Honey was taking a nap there and woke up instantly, attentively looking at the strangers. She even growled a bit, her protectiveness clear in her stance. The four of them stopped worried, but I gave her a quick, sharp whistle that made her come to my side and sit down.

A few minutes later, we were all sitting around the porch, because the inside was too small for six people to be cramped up, and had some coffee together, still talking about the Village. I retold the whole story of how we found and took it for ourselves, about Mikki, Will and Ma already being there and our agreement to work together, then I told them about finding the Morales’ and then the young sibling in the woods. I said nothing about Jack and nobody asked. I had the feeling Andrea and Michonne may have already told them the story that day at the prison before I woke up.

Everybody who was at Michonne’s for the meeting already knew each other, none of the new people were there. I looked around before we started, seeing only the ones from the very beginning – except for Michonne, but she’d been in my life even longer than the others had – and there was something bursting in my chest. They were _here_. Not all like I wanted, but many of them. The Dixons, my companions from day one; Glenn the first one I decided to take in the group; Andrea, Carol, Morales, who I’d known since the road and been through so much with; Maggie, who I’d lived with very shortly at the farm but became a real friend, and Rick, the coma, shooting guy from Atlanta.

I caught Daryl watching me from the garage entrance where he leaned on his side. I was smiling something stunned for these people being here and Daryl got it. He flickered the corner of his lip up in a tiny smile, sharing the moment with me. Taking a deep breath, I went over to join them all inside.

“Can someone bring that table over here?” I asked pointing at the oval formica table that was against the wall, the same we’d used to have lunch the other day, and to the center of the garage. Merle dragged it noisily with his one hand while I fumbled to find something on the shelves. Everything that had been in the office, the one that got destroyed by the governor, was crumpled up in there until we organized a new place. “Anyone know where’s that map we were making?”

Mo helped me find it folded among the other papers and I unfolded it, placing it in the middle of the table. Everyone gathered around it then.

“Ok, so this map ain’t completed yet, many of the houses still ain’t there and we ain’t sure the measurements are alright, but it’s just a draft,” I explained to the prison guys, “we’ll make a better one soon. Mo, how’s the wall?”

He shouldered his way gently to my side and pointed down at it, “We finished turning the corner yesterday, which means the front wall’s done. Got much faster with David helping, the kid’s fast,” he said pointing a calloused finger to where the front wall turned to south. “But with the material we have left we’ll pro’ly be able to get only half the south wall done, we’ll need more. Couple of weeks, three at most and we’ll run out of bricks and cement. So, here,” he said and got away, going to the shelves to retrieve a phone book, “I found it on one of the houses, I think it’s one of the last ones, if not the last one that got printed,” he placed it on the table, in front of me, and opened it to a marked page and pointed down at a spot on the yellow page. “A brick manufacturer in Barnesville, around 30 miles east.”

“Nothing closer?” I asked him as I flipped through the pages of the phone book, but still leaving it open on the page Morales was showing.

“There’s a Home Depot in Griffin, half closer, but I doubt we’d find all we need to finish the whole wall. We’ll need at least double of what we had first.”

“Home Depot’s still worth a detour,” I said thinking about all the useful things we might still find in there, probably in the storage rooms. “We’ll make it a long run, go first down to Barnesville and hit Griffin on the way back.”

“You’re still hurt,” Daryl said from where he stood on the other side of the table among the others.

“Uh, there’s that…” and I looked back at Morales, “How long you think we can wait?”

“Couple weeks, at most, I’d prefer if we don’t run out of it all until we can bring more.”

“I can make it in a couple of weeks,” I said nodding.

“Or we can go before that and you stay,” Michonne opined.

I was shaking my head even as she spoke, “No. Nope… It’s a long run, I wanna be there. Sorry. We’ll be gone for a few days, ain’t like the day-long runs we do all the time. We’ll need a bigger team and I’ll _be_ there,” and I pointed at Merle, “list me in.”

At Merle’s sharp nod, Rick seemed a little confused, “ _Merle_ organizes the runs?”

Nobody around missed the disdain on his tone and I don’t think he’d even tried to cover it.

I frowned, “Not the small ones. Michonne takes care of those, but this will be a bigger one. Merle takes care of security ‘round the Village and longer runs, which is the case.”

“Much like Shane did,” Rick said and, just as he said Shane’s name, he seemed to realize what he was saying, his tone going down a little, but by then the words were out already. There was silence around the table, all eyes traveling from Rick to me and back. I tried keeping a straight face.

“Yeah,” I finally said, chin raised. “Much like Shane did. But this one I can trust.”

Rick just nodded and finally looked down, averting his eyes from mine.

“Count me in too,” Daryl said and aired the conversation a little. After him, Michonne and Merle informed they’d go as well.

“What about you?” I asked Rick and I knew it could sound like a defiance, but I didn’t care. I needed to know where he stood. Going together on a long run like this one could mean something.

“I’ll go,” Rick said immediately.

“Count me in too,” Glenn also affirmed.

“When we goin’ then, since ya’ll decided on the team already and my job’s done?” Merle asked.

“Give it one more week, I’ll see how the leg’s going and then we’ll define it,” I decided. “Good?” I asked as I looked around at each person, seeing nods all around. “Good. Now, I wanna share a few ideas I been havin’. So, uh, I don’t want anybody else living in Main Street.”

“Hey!” Merle reacted immediately. “I live in main street!”

“Yeah, sorry, gonna have to move. Hear me out!”, I said before he could protest and started explaining always pointing at whatever I mentioned on the map. “I want the whole street, the entrance of the Village, to be kind of an administration place, we’ll have the office again with all this stuff, the storage will need to be more spacious with time so we’ll use one of the big houses from the corner. The infirmary can stay where it is because it’s right at the end of the street, so it’d still be good. Then in this whole lotta space we got behind the houses on both sides we can build stuff that will be for everyone. Of course, after we finish the wall, that’s still the priority.”

“What kind of stuff?” Andrea asked, apparently not carrying that she’d have to move from her house at the corner.

Then there was a whole discussion on things we could have there, like bringing water pipes there to make sinks and tanks to wash up and do laundry, like a communal workstation, which led to ideas of building brick counters to clean up the meat our hunters would bring from the woods, then fire burners and barbecue grills, which led to an idea of making a fire pit, but this one around the lake were we all could gather, and a shed to be something like a community center where we’d have our meetings and have meals together.

I’d been quiet for a few minutes now, just watching and listening as everyone pitched in ideas, no real plans yet, but with such positivity over all that could be done that all I could do was watch, listen and smile. Even Daryl, who never spoke too much when there were too many people around, said we could build smokers and make smoke-dry meat so they would last longer.

And as I was observing, I caught Rick observing me. I held eyes with him, thinking I might know what he was thinking. He knew I was doing this on purpose. He knew I wanted them in this meeting so he and the others would see how things were managed at the Village, how I ran things, how much could be done and how _good_ it was. Well, he caught me, but I hadn’t been trying to hide it. It was exactly what I wanted, and now he’d seen it. It was not just a talk, not just me trying to make the Village sound utopic, not just Daryl telling them about running water and solar panels. It was real.

And now he had a decision to make.

I lit up a cigarette as I sat by his side on the porch steps of my house, a while later. We were alone now. He scratched his beard, rested his elbows on his bent knees ad he looked around, eyeing the street, the two houses across from mine and the woods beyond.

I pointed to that direction with my chin as I blew out the smoke.

“It’s where my boy’s buried,” I told him. “That corner of the Village.”

Rick looked sideways at me and then at the direction I’d pointed, surprised I’d brought it up. Then he nodded, understandingly.

“I’m really sorry for your loss,” he said after a moment.

“Thanks…” I just murmured. “Sorry for yours,” he looked down at the step between his knees then, his face tensing up. “And for Dale, and Theo, the people from the farm…” he was nodding at each one of them. “And I’m sorry you had to shoot your best friend that day. Can’t’ve been easy for you.”

“Had to be done…” he said hoarsely.

“Yeah, had to,” I agreed. “Rick… Why ya’ll still ain’t living here?”

He took a second to answer, “It’s not that simple.”

“Yeah, I heard that,” I stomped the cigarette butt on the step below me. “But I really don’t see how.”

“We fought for that place. Hard. Lost people. We’re all proud of what got done. We cleared it, we’re making a home. Can’t just walk away from that.”

“I get the feeling. We had to walk away from a place once… When it was just Michonne, Andrea and myself. The Governor found it and wanted to take it. We couldn’t fight back then so we had to leave. I get the feeling. But this is different. Ain’t nobody trying to take your place or threatening your lives, it’s simply that you have a better option. Which you _know_ is better.”

“The prison is not a bad place to –”

“It ain’t the best.”

“Have you ever heard of _too good to be true_?”

“This what you think the Village is?”

“Yes. Honestly? Yes. Utopia in the apocalypse. People will always be keener to take a place like this than the prison.”

“Ok, first of all, it’s not _utopia_. It’s real. It takes work, and it always will, but it ain’t unreal. People will want it? Of course, you know what happened just three days ago. But it’s what we do, Rick, we fight. You’d fight for the prison too if someone showed there, just like here. The difference is the living part, not the surviving one.”

“Surviving is what life’s about now.”

“Don’t have to be. We survive, sure, but we also live. I don’t want these people to _just survive_. I didn’t want that for my baby, I wanted him to have a good place to grow up in, learn things, be loved, be happy. And survive too because it’s part of life now, and he’d have it here. Your children can have it.”

“You let _me_ worry about _my_ children,” he said firmly.

“Yes, then _do._ ”

We stared at each other for a moment and I could see the waves of irritation coming out of Rick. They appeared from one second to another. He’s been firm during the conversation, but it changed when I mentioned the children.

“This wouldn’t work. And you know it,” he finally said, looking away from me to the street again. “We’d better go on the way it is.”

“A’right, you don’t wanna come with your children, don’t come. But ya gotta know that everyone there got the option to come, and if they decide to do so, I hope you won’t stand on their way.”

“I’m not holding anyone there against their will.”

“Good,” I said impatiently and not bothering to hide it. “But I gotta say - and at this very moment I don’t even like you enough to feel that way but I still do: the prison group, the ones who prefer to say there, will be able to count with the Village for anything. These people are like family to me. You arrived later and we had all the problems, but either way, so is you. And if I ain’t gonna have it the way I want, that’s everyone here under my watch, then you and I gonna have to work together in a partnership of sorts.”

“Aren’t we already? Two of us are going in the long run with you. That’s the beginning of it.”

That did work to calm me a little. I hated it, I hated his decision and right now I almost hated _him_ , but I’d have to work with it.

“We’ll make it work,” I affirmed after a moment. “As we’ll be talkin’ about it again. And again and again, this I promise you.”


	51. Day 317

It’d been three days and yet they were still not here.

Carol had said her goodbyes to Rick, Glenn, and Maggie at the gate when they were leaving and Rick seemed surprised as if she hadn’t told him she’d be staying. I believe she thought she didn’t have to because it was an obvious choice, at least for her. At the same goodbyes, Maggie told me she’d talk to everyone and to Rick and we’d have this all settled, but I knew what Rick had just told me on my front porch. It would be no use; Rick simply didn’t want to come.

“They’ll all come, Sam,” Carol told me as we walked alone through the woods. “Eventually. Everyone wants, I even heard Carl telling Rick he wanted to come.”

“Then what’s holding’em?” I asked a bit exasperatedly. “Rick?”

“I think they feel bad for him. You know, to just up and go and leave him behind. It would be best if everyone agreed and came at the same time, including Rick.”

“They feel bad for him…” I repeated to try and make sense of this notion. “Because he’s just lost Lori.”

“And because he fought a lot for the prison. We all did.”

I breathed out loudly, “See, I can understand all you’re saying. Really. But I just can’t agree. He’s got a baby who’s just born and he prefers to keep her at a fuckin prison instead of in a real Village, in a real house. So yeah, I can see your point, but I ain’t gonna understand it any time soon.”

“They’ll all come eventually,” she repeated to reassure me.

We went silent for a moment as arrived at Jack’s grave and stopped there, looking down at it. I took the hard, deep breath I always had to take any time I went there.

“We talked about you when Judith was born,” Carol started. “We all always thought of you. Anything that’d happen, we’d consider what you’d do or say… But we didn’t _talk_ about you. Daryl… Every time there was something that reminded him of you or something that reminded all of us of you, he’s close up inside himself for a long time. Caught him crying once, even months after… So we didn’t talk about you, never mentioned your name, trying to make it just a little less hard for him,” and she paused for a moment. I was wordless, my chest tight around my heart. “But then Judith was born and Lori was dead and we needed to feed the baby, so Daryl went out there to look for formula for her, the most urgent run of all. When he came back it was dark already and we were all desperate… We prepared the formula quickly and Daryl,” Carol smiled fondly at the memory, “held her in his arms and gave her the bottle. Called her Little Asskicker,” I laughed and sobbed at the same time, wet eyes finally spilling. This was such a Daryl thing to do, nicknaming the baby, and an image I’d had in my mind for a long time, Daryl holding and caring for a baby. “And later, when we were talking, he said only _he’d’ve born a month ago_. He was able to talk about Jack when he held Judith in his arms like it helped him heal a little bit.”

I took a moment to speak, picturing the scene in my mind, “He’d been a great dad… He pro’ly don’t think so, but I know. He’d be… He decided Jack was his and dreamed of fathering him… And I don’t think I can ever give it to him now.”

“Don’t pressure yourself. It’s too recent. You might want to someday, or you might not. It’s your choice. He wouldn’t want you to do it just for him.”

“No, I know… But who knows. Maybe someday I’ll be able to think of it without it hurting so much.”

“Yeah…” Carol agreed in a whisper. “Me too.”

* * *

Daryl went away for the first time that day, with Michonne and Carol, to a short run to Brooks, to check on storage sheds and barns of the farms just outside town. Michonne had been to over half of them already and brought home valuable things. They’d be back in the evening and I wanted to be there with them but I was still limping and strictly forbidden by Miranda to strain myself.

It’s a good thing that I stayed.

Merle came to find me in the woods while I was hanging on a tree branch by both hands, doing pull-ups, exercising my muscles that’d been still for a few days, and trying to get my right shoulder back to what it was. It didn’t hurt anymore by now, but I still felt like it was weaker than the other.

He stopped when he saw I could see him and said nothing. My wrist ached at the sight of his expression. I opened my hands and let myself fall to the ground, still keeping in mind to put most of the weight on the left leg. Clapping my hands together to get rid of the dirt on the palms of the fingerless gloves, I walked towards him.

“It’s Ma,” he said simply.

I lowered my head with a harsh breath out, resting my hands on my hips, my heart tightening inside my chest. “They’re there with’er?”

“Yeah,” Merle answered as we started walking away together. “Won’t leave her side ‘til the end, but none of’em wanna do it. Blondie’s there too.”

“Good. Important for’em that you’re both there when it happens.”

“Yeah, I just came out to get ya… But truth is... I got no idea what to do.”

“Nothing you can other than be there for your girl.”

The sadness around the house was palpable. Outside, Morales and Sasha were on the small porch, one leaning against each side of the rail, and Emma was sitting on the steps playing with Honey, throwing a sick to her over and over to the middle of the street. From the front of the house, I looked at the platform to see Tyrese was up there and I noticed David wasn’t around, so he was probably on rounds.

Ma’s bedroom was small and cozy, filled with pictures on the walls, Holy Mary’s images, and blankets. She was in bed, Will and Mikki each on one side of her, holding her hands, caressing her thin, white hair and kissing her forehead. They were both speaking to her quietly and I couldn’t hear it. Miranda who’d been holding Ma’s wrist carefully between her fingers, let go then, resting her hand softly on the mattress, and with a sad whisper, let us all know.

“She’s gone.”

Mikki and Will started crying instantly, still holding their old mother, and Merle passed by me at the doorway to go sit by Mikki, completely at a loss of what to do. He saw Andrea hug Will and took it as an example. Miranda came out of the room and I followed her outside. I didn’t even see when sad tears started falling from my eyes.

When we got out, I only had to shake my head and the others understood.

“We’ll give them a few minutes but I’ll have to go back in there…”, I told them. “We’ll need to dig the grave.”

“I’ll do it,” Morales said immediately.

“I’ll help,” Sasha offered.

I nodded thankfully at them, “Right by Jack’s, okay?”

Nodding, they both left just as Emma got up from the steps and looked up at me.

“Did she die?” she asked.

“Yeah, Emma. Ma’s just died.”

“Is she gonna become one of those things?”

“No, she’s not.”

“How do you know?”

“I ain’t letting it happen. I’ll stop it before.”

“How?”

Damn, was that really the best time to have a child asking difficult questions? I took a breath to force myself to be patient because nothing was Emma’s fault and she genuinely didn’t know the answer to the question. And, seriously, how in the hell was I gonna tell her that when someone dies we need to perforate their brain otherwise they’ll become a walking dead? I wished David was here so he’d be the one to explain it to her. But then Miranda, bless the woman, took over.

“Come here, _hija_ , sit with me”, she gestured the girl to join her again on the steps. “Go ahead, Sam, I got this.”

Will and Andrea were leaving the bedroom when I got back inside. I hugged him, who cried on my shoulder, and I told him how sorry I was for his loss and that everyone at the Village loved her. Andrea guided him to the living room as I went to the bedroom, where Merle was holding a crying Mikki in his arms, both still sitting in bed. Mikki looked up at me when I quietly entered.

“You think it’s time already?”

I nodded with my lips in a thin line, “We don’t know how long it’d take… Better be soon.”

“Come on, sweetheart,” Merle said in the gentlest manner had ever heard him speak in all those years I’d known him. He motioned Mikki to get up from bed, practically carrying her weeping form away from her dead mother.

I was left alone with her and sat by her side on the bed. I wanted to be as careful as possible so neither Will nor Mikki would have to see a wound in her head. Images if Sophia walking out of the barn and the memory of stabbing her brain came back will full force and I closed my eyes tightly.

The saddest part was that I knew it would be the second time I’d do that, but it’d be far from the last one.

* * *

We were all gathered around Ma’s grave, the pile of earth still on the side, as Merle and Morales lowered her body down, wrapped in a carefully enveloped white sheet. Each returned to the side of their women then, and with Merle’s arm around her, Mikki spoke for her mother.

“Loretta Maisie Sanders,” she started with a tearful smile, telling us the full name we didn’t know because to us she was just Ma, “She was sixty-two years old when she made a promise to Holy Mary, who she was devoted to. If her husband survived his cancer, they would adopt a child. And he did, he healed and they went through with the promise. They found these two little brothers in an orphanage, a two-year-old and a five-months-old baby, and they didn’t want to separate them, so they adopted both,” and she looked at Will, “both of us. And then, even though she always thought she’d never have children, she did. Her husband, our father, was even older than her already, nearly seventy, and they were brave enough to face the challenge. We lost him just five years after and Ma was left to raise two kids alone.”

I was listening quietly, arms crossed and a hand covering my mouth, I didn’t see him, but I knew Daryl was behind me even before his left hand rested on my hip a moment before his chest touched my back. Breathing out, and let myself relax against him and turned my head to the side, closing my eyes to feel him rest his cheek on my forehead, and we both listened to Mikki speak.

“She was a feverous catholic but she never judged me. She accepted who I was from the beginning, and she understood what it was even before I could understand. She kept on with her faith but she stopped going to church because there everybody kept saying bad things about me and she couldn’t accept that. She helped me chose my name new name, took me shopping for the right clothes, used the correct pronoun, and would correct anyone who used the wrong one, stayed by my side when I recovered from surgery. In the last few years, she didn’t remember much, kept forgetting more and more… But she never forgot us, never forgot our names or our faces. And I’m glad that, in the very end, she made new friends, new people who considered her family even though she didn’t know what was going on. In the very end, she was safe, surrounded by friends. By her family.”

The sun had just set and the woods were a gloomy blue as we finished the service. Merle guided Mikki away in his arms, Andrea doing the same for Will, and Morales started lowering the earth into the grave. Silently, Daryl let me go, took the other shovel, and helped him. Only Miranda and I stayed until they were finished, waiting for our men. Daryl was dirty and sweaty like he always seemed to be, but I didn’t care about it as I hid in his chest, his arms enveloping me, his lips resting on my hair.

* * *

Daryl and I had been sleeping for a few hours, the bedroom dark and everything around us and the house silent except for the crickets and bats sounds. We’d spent a couple of hours with everyone, all gathered in Mikki and Will’s. We all ate together and mostly kept them company, until one by one we all retreated to our homes or to the scheduled rounds.

Daryl, Michonne, and Carol had updated me on how the run had gone and I was happy with how successful it was. They’d brought a delivery truck they’d found outside a warehouse, and tomorrow we’d unload the boxes of powdered milk, flour, and sugar they’d found. There was still more, and for what they said, _much more_ in this warehouse. We’d have to organize ourselves and go back there as soon as possible.

But now, Daryl and I were sitting up in bed, knives in hand, ready to attack or defend ourselves, of what I had no idea until we understood it had been just the radio on the nightstand calling me. Daryl took a few more seconds than I did to relax and rest the knives again on their hiding spots.

“Sam, do you copy?” the voice came again, in a whisper through the speaker.

“Sasha?” I instinctively also called in a low voice.

“I’m up the tree by the back hedge. There’s a herd approaching us from east.”

I was already putting on my first boot and I pressed the button, “How big?”

“Big. I mean… It’s dark but from what I can see… It’s huge, Sam.”

“Mo, you’re at the platform?” I asked as Daryl finished buttoning up his shirt and leaned to put on his boots.

“I am, all quiet here for now,” he answered.

“The herd’s still just reaching us from east,” Sasha completed.

“Everyone,” I started as I got up and reached for the first gun, tucking it in the shoulder holster, “all lights out and _complete_ silence. We’ll be right there, Sasha.”

Focused and silent, Daryl and I geared ourselves with guns, knives, and our crossbows, and ran out of the house, leaving Honey locked inside. Sasha saw us running there silently and came down the tree to meet us under it.

“Bigger than I thought,” she whispered as Daryl started climbing up. Sure enough, the characteristic sounds of the dead was coming from all along the back hedge, but as they couldn’t see us inside, they were not forcing themselves against it. “It’s just reached us and they’re starting to circle the Village, north, and south. They’ll be at front soon.”

Daryl lowered himself quietly to the ground as I whispered, “We gotta stay as far as possible from the hedges so they won’t smell us. How many?” I asked Daryl.

“A shit ton. Can’t see the end of it in the dark.”

“Sasha, please stay here and just watch. We’ll need to know if they start pressing on the hedge.”

“What if they do?” she asked me in an urgent whisper.

“Then we’ll think of a way to attract’em away.”

She nodded and turned to climb up the tree again as Daryl and I walked away.

“What you mean, attract’em away?” Daryl asked me as we walked in the dark.

“Done this before. You make noise in the opposite direction, they’ll follow like cattle. Just hope we won’t need to.”

The whole community had heard Sasha on the radio and almost everyone - I could see Miranda only and Emma were not there - were already gathered in the middle of Main Street in front of Merle’s house, Will upon the platform, crouched down to look at the street with as little of his head showing above the wall as possible.

“Not much we can do now,” I told them in a whisper after updating them on from there the herd was coming from and how big it was. “Just gotta hope they’ll pass us and not press on the back hedge. Sasha’s keeping an eye on it, if it happens we’ll get the cars and drive’em away.”

“Sam?” Sasha’s voice came from the radio as if on cue.

“Yeah?” I answered immediately, everyone in a circle around me to listen.

“Not pressing on the hedge, just moving around the Village now. It’s like they follow each other, it’s freaky. North and South now, but still moving west. I think they’ll just pass us with no trouble.”

“Will?” I called him through the radio and he looked down at us all from the platform, quietly. “Let us know when they reach the road,” and I saw him nod from up there.

“We just gotta shut up now,” Merle said. “And wait.”

We all nodded in agreement, the air tense all around, and slowly the sound of the walkers reached our ears, groans and moans and rustling feet coming from outside the Village, north and south. My wrist was aching in tension as my mind created several scenarios where they noticed us inside and started pressing on the gate and on the hedges, tearing it down and overpowering us.

Sensing my distress, Daryl held my forearm firmly in his hand, making me look up at him and giving me a reassuring nod. He was tense too, but he was telling me we’d be fine. _We’d be fine_ …

Long minutes felt like hours. We were all there, armed and ready, but silent and motionless, when Will finally pressed the button on his radio up on the platform.

“First ones are on the road now. Heading west,” and after a quick pause, he finished, “They don’t see us.”

“If the herd’s heading west,” Carol started and she approached me and Daryl, and shared a look with him.

“Prison’s west,” he completed her, understanding her concern.

_Shit._

“With only those fences, if they see people inside –”

“A herd this big will knock it down,” I completed.

I had to see this herd for myself. I ran as quietly as possible, ignoring the ache on my thigh, towards the platform. Will came down when he saw me approach and I climbed the stairs. The stench was unbearable, my nostrils trying to close up to protect me from the smell, and sure enough, I saw when felt like hundreds of walkers coming from the sides of the Village, reaching and crossing the road, invading the meadow and reaching the woods ahead of it, right towards where the prison was. But they were still coming, the road filled with them, thankfully ignoring out gate, having no idea that they only had to knock the gate down to have a feast inside.

But the feast they were not going to have here, they’d most likely have at the prison. I climbed down and met the others again in the middle of the street, Will climbing up again to keep watching.

We had to think fast.

“Okay. They’ll get overpowered of we do nothing. We gonna have to go there.”

“How’re we supposed to get _out_?” Tyrese questioned.

“Can’t go out now, they’ll close up on any car we put out there,” Michonne affirmed.

“You’re right, we’ll have to wait for it to thin out,” I said, “We’ll have the cars ready, open the gate just enough to pass and close immediately. Some will see us after that, but we’ll lead them away from the Village with the cars.”

“Alright, some are gonna have to stay,” Merle said and pressed on the button of his radio. “Sasha, we’re headin’ out to the prison, folk’s gonna be in trouble with the herd. Ya stay there and keep the rounds on east and shit. Miranda, stay inside with Emma, David will be joinin’ ya –”

“No, I can help!” David said immediately.

“No, David,” I told him. “You still need more trainin’ and this ain’t the time. Just _go_ , now.”

David seemed to be a mature, held-together young man, but his hard steps and huffing as he walked away down the street showed he was still just a teenager.

Merle moved on, “Will and Mikki will stay here, keep an eye on the platform, and Tyrese will round north and south. Ya’ll got it?” he looked around to see us all nod in understanding. “Rest of us all going, two cars, load the fuck up ya’ll!”


	52. Day 318, part 1

The silence was palpable inside the Village. Around it, the deep, grunting sound of their dead throats and their rotting feet rustling on the dry earth surrounded us like an eerie preannouncement of death.

But both my hands were enclosed in his warm, calloused fists, our chests flush together as we waited in silence. He calmed me down. I’d been tense, pacing around like a caged animal, excitement and fear taking over my stance, until Daryl came to stop in front of me, a firm but calm look in his eyes, focused and confident, and took my hands in his. I breathed in and out deeply and closed my eyes, letting my forehead rest in his, feeling his deep, steady breath against my skin.

He grounded me. Daryl was my rock. He didn’t have to say a word or make big gestures. It was like he knew exactly what I needed when not even I knew it. Before, when we went back home in the late afternoon after burying Ma, he did the very same. He hugged me tight and held me strongly against his chest, until I cried all I’d needed to cry. Being the one to finish her after her death had been harder on me than I could have predicted. It brought Sophia back, and Carol’s pain, and my pain. After I stopped crying, we sat on the couch and stayed there for hours, just talking, holding each other and, after a while, making out like teenagers.

There was light on the horizon when the herd thinned enough for us to finally stop waiting and do something. We’d been geared, loaded with weapons and ammo and ready to go, quite impatiently. It was impossible to plan too much on what we’d do at the prison without knowing and seeing how the situation was there, but we knew we’d have to shoot like hell and try to create a distraction to guide them away from the fences.

From the platform, Will gestured it was okay to go now and Ty ran to the gate, unlocking it as quietly as possible and holding the pulling handles, standing still, waiting for the seven of us to enter the cars and get ready to drive away. At our nods, Ty rolled it open, Merle and Daryl driving through the gap as fast as possible. The noise the gate and the engines made got the last of the herd’s walkers to turn around avidly and change their path to pursue us or whatever was making the noise, it didn’t seem to matter to them. Instead of going to the gate, though, they tried to follow the cars, the movement apparently more interesting than the metal noise, and they still left the Village alone as if it was invisible to them. Looking back as we drove away, I saw Ty had already closed the gate behind us, and a small herd of something like ten walkers trying to run after the cars on their failing legs.

We had a truck and an SUV, the Dixons driving them at high speed on the empty road to the prison, going around the herd. It took us no more than ten minutes to get there and the sight in front of us was one of a nightmare. The rising day was grey and the dust the walkers lifted thickly in clouds in the air. Gunshots came from within the prison but they seemed to be doing nothing to diminish the crowd of the dead pressing against the outer fence and the gate, their groans and moans loud and desperate as they hadn’t been when they passed the Village.

As both cars stopped to a halt in the field between the woods and the fences, the headlights and engines instantly drew the attention of the ones in the back and a few stray ones still coming from the woods.

“Hop on the cars!” I yelled with the radio button pressed to the other car could listen. It was loud outside, grunts and shots, no need to whisper now. Before the dead could reach us, we were all sliding out. I climbed up on the hood of the pickup and from there to the roof, shotgun loaded and coked, and started shooting with the others, both Michonne and Andrea now on the hood. One head after the other, the walkers from the back of the crowd started falling, others turned to us and started stumbling in our direction.

“More from the woods!” somebody shouted and, sure enough, all the movement was bringing even more in our direction. We weren’t safe here.

“Gotta move!” I yelled. “They’ll close us in!”

But before we could do anything in this change of plans, a loud, metallic noise stopped us, all walkers that were coming for us turning away confusedly and going for it, as the outer fence of the prison crumbled down under their weight, one dead corpse falling over the other, the chain effect bringing down the entire extent of the front fence. They were now stumbling to the inner fence, quickly taking over the safety path there had been between them. There was now only this thin, weak barrier between the people inside and the dead.

“Everyone stay on the truck!” I shouted again over the commotion. It was safer, we could stay inside the cab, up on the roof and the bed. “Gotta lead’em away!”

“I’ll go!” Morales yelled from where he was standing on the hood of the SUV. “You did it for me once,” he was able to send me a confident smile.

“Cover him!” Merle’s voice sounded thunderous over all the roar. He turned around and started shooting every walker on Morales’ way. Andrea did the same and it took only seconds for Mo to be able to climb into the driver’s seat and close the door.

I was joined by Daryl on the roof of the truck as I reloaded my shotgun. Merle had started stabbing walker after walker with his knifed stump after seeing Morales to safety, now taking out the ones that approached us. Carol was in there with him, shot after accurate shot into dead brains, and she looked like the calmest, coolest person alive. Daryl and I shot the walkers on the back of the crowd that still pushed against the inner fence, Andrea shot the ones nearer with a pistol and Michonne perforated brains with her katana.

They were starting to pile up all around the truck, the ones still alive climbing over their bodies and getting a better reach to us. Their hands were touching the legs of the ones in the lower spaces, but were quickly removed.

Morales accelerated the SUV away from us, running over at least five corpses on the way, and stopped some fifty yards from the truck, and there he started honking like crazy, banging his hand on the door, yelling and blinking the lights. It worked like a charm; immediately, most of the walkers at the fence slowly but surely turned to look at the car and wobbled their way to the appealing noise, going in the exact direction we wanted them to.

“Hold your fire!” I instructed and there were only two of three more rounds after that. Andrea started using her knife and Daryl his crossbow as I gestured widely with my hands to get the attention of the people inside. I could barely see them, the walkers blocking the view, and I tried to make them understand they should stop too. The only noise should be the one Morales was making. After a moment, they seemed to understand because they also stopped, and I gestured they should all run into the prison, away from the corpses’ sight.

With the walkers nearly reaching the rear of the car, Morales finally took off slowly with it, still yelling and honking, and they followed like cattle. The ones that had closed on us, at least thirty of them, still stayed around the truck, seeing and smelling us, and we kept on working on killing them. I dropped the empty shotgun to the bed of the truck and swung the crossbow from my back, cocking and arming it as fast as possible.

Mirroring each other, Daryl and I both placed the front of our crossbows on the metal of the car roof with a loud clung, pulled the string to cock them, took an arrow from the holster and placed it accurately to arm it. I already had a smile on my face as we did it. We lifted them at the same time, took aim and show a walker each, ones that had been near Michonne and Andrea at the front of the truck, and they fell, adding to the pile of cadavers.

And it was obvious this was absolutely _not_ the moment for that, but we couldn’t help but share a heated look. _Damn, Daryl_. The man was hot as fuck. He was sweaty and dirty and breathing hard, but he gave me a dirty smirk and I could almost see his filthy thoughts. I licked my lower lip and laughed, and it took just one second for us to focus again on exterminating the herd.

As the numbers were thinning, the least of the herd still following the car away, its sound now far ahead, I grabbed both knives I had tucked in my waistband, one in each hand, and jumped from the roof straight to the floor. I stabbed a walker in the head, turning away instantly to stab the one behind me with the other knife, and roughly pulled them both out of the skulls at the same time, the bodies crumpling to the ground.

Taking my lead, the others came down too and we started going straight in the direction of the stray ones, eager to get this over with. We were all covered in sweat, dust and sprayed blood as we stood away from the truck, in the middle of the field with our backs to each other, killing walker after walker, and it felt like we’d been at it for hours, the sun already high and burning in the sky when they finally stopped coming.

Morales was nowhere to be seen anymore, even the herd that followed him already out of sight. We were silent for a long moment, looking around, making sure it was over, breathing loud and exhausted. My arms were burning, but it was fine.

We were all alive and the herd was gone.

I turned to look at the others to make sure everyone was fine as I tucked the knives back in their holsters, my hands grabbing Daryl’s arms as I looked him over as he did exactly the same thing. Merle celebrated aloud and the others started laughing with him, adrenalin pumping in our veins. I may have yelled a loud “Fuck!” right before we ran to the gate, which was barely standing.

From the inside, Carl was running down full speed from the building to the gate and slid it open quickly to let us all in. He had the sheriff’s hat on, knives and a pistol on his waist and blood sprayed on his face, looking like a small fighter of a man, and he was smiling up at us, making a wave of tenderness rush over me.

I held him by the shoulders, looking him over as somebody else slid the gate closed, “You okay?” I asked and he nodded with a smile. “Judith?”

“She’s safe inside,” he let us know.

The rest of the people were already out as we walked up the path. Only now I started feeling my thigh hurt, all the commotion from before had masked any pain I could be feeling, but now it was clear I had pushed it too far. I slowed my steps a little, limping, and looked down at it. There was blood on my thigh.

“Did you pull a stitch?” Daryl was at my side, a hand on my arm to make me stop. I hissed as I rested my weight on my left leg and reached for Daryl’s shoulder for balance. “Hershel can take a look at that,” he said as he lifted my left arm around his shoulder and held me firmly by my waist, helping me walk. He practically carried me up there, nearly my whole weight against his side.

“How did you know?” Rick’s voice reached my ears as we approached from behind the group. Everyone turned to look at me. I could see Glenn and Maggie standing by Carol, Beth with the baby in her arms and Hershel by Rick, Carl right in front of his father and one other big man standing a little behind, who I hadn’t been introduced to.

“Herd passed ‘round the Village,” I answered. “We knew it’d reach the prison.”

“It passed ‘ _around_ ” the Village?”

I dropped my arm from Daryl’s shoulder and he let me stand by myself and, by his energy, I could feel he was thinking the same as me. What the hell did Rick mean to say with _that tone_?

“Yeah, around! Didn’t see us. And ya know _why_ they didn’t see us?” Rick said nothing, just jutted his chin up minimally. I opened my arms, “Because _walls_ , Rick!” I raised my voice just a little.

Rick let out a huffing laugh and looked up, hands on his hips, “ _Walls_ again,” he said.

“The fuck’s wrong with you, asshole?” Merle barked, instantly starting to cage-pace along the back of the group.

“Am I getting the wrong vibe here?” I asked aloud almost over Merle.” Did we just come all the way here to save your ass _for this_?”

“We had it!” Rick affirmed aloud, firmly, with so much certainty that I knew he was out of his mind. This was not _normal_. He was seriously troubled and it was probably worse than any of us had perceived so far.

“We didn’t have it, Rick!” Hershel barked aloud making Beth get startled by his side. “They would have slaughtered us! If they hadn’t come,” he pointed at the direction of our group, “we wouldn’t be here having this conversation now!”

“How do we even know _they_ we not the ones to send the herd here in the first place?”

There were several cries of outrage around us, from both parts of the group, and at least I knew I was not alone in my indignation. Merle barked insults, Michonne yelled in disbelief, and I heard Daryl’s voice call “You think we’d do _that?”_ , but I had my eyes on Rick, anger rising inside my chest like fire.

I took a few slow, limping steps towards the man and was surprised by my own voice as it came out low and menacing.

“ _What did you say?_ ”

There was silence around us but I could feel the vibration in the air.

Rick looked down at me, right at my eyes for a moment, then he looked away licking his teeth and nodding something to himself, but didn’t answer.

He reminded me so much of Shane at that moment that I could have vomited.

“You think we guided that huge ass herd all the way over here and then risked _dying_ to fight it? _On purpose_? For what?!”

“I don’t know what you’d be capable of in your spree to take over _my group_.”

I was genuinely stunned. I huffed in disbelief, mouth opened and shaking my head as I looked up at him. Before I could answer, others did for me.

“This isn’t _your_ group, Rick,” Maggie affirmed from among the others.

“Sam’s the one who formed this group in the first place!” Carol said from where she was now standing next to Daryl.

“And even so, nobody can simply _take us_ , Rick,” Glenn said. “We can make or own decisions!”

“You all decided to stay!” Rick barked as he also looked around, his arm swinging widely as he pointed at all of them.

“We decided to stay only while we convinced _you_ to go too,” Hershel told him.

“Yeah, we just don’t want to leave the kids here,” Beth said shyly as she held Judith in her arms.

“You’re worried about _my_ children?” Rick asked as he pointed at his own chest.

“Dad…” Carl tried but was ignored.

“Somebody’s gotta be worried about’em!” I barked at him. “Because you seem okay with keeping’em in here even though half of your protections are gone!”

“We’ll fortify the one that’s left!”

There were more disagreeing cries all around.

“You are out of your mind!” I charged.

“I am taking my daughters away right now,” Hershel decided and looked from Maggie to Beth, nodding an order.

“Whoever else wants to go,” I decided, turning my back to Rick. I was done with him. _Done._ “Go pack now, we’re leaving.”

People started to move, Glenn, Maggie, Hershel, and were followed by Carol and Andrea, heading inside with them to help.

“You’re leaving the prison after all we went through to secure it?” Rick insisted, yelling at their retreating forms. “After the people we lost to get the job done?”

I turned to him again, “How many _more_ people you want to lose? Huh? How many coulda died today?” and I pointed at my own head. “You fuckin’ lunatic!”

“We’d take the escape route to the back!” he yelled, appointing his arm at some random direction and takin fast steps towards me. “We’d’ve managed like we managed all this long without _you_ and your goddamn Village!”

“By keeping’em all on the road for all this long? Keeping a pregnant woman out there for _eight fuckin’ months_?!”

I refused to step back as he all but invaded my personal space and I could sense Daryl right behind me, his angry energy against my back. Rick was seething, looking down at me from up close, his mouth twisted in fury.

I didn’t know who this man in front of me was.

He took a couple of seconds as he boiled up his ire inside, and then he whispered.

“You should’ve stayed dead.”

Somebody, I don’t know who, pulled me back and away from Rick to remove me from the fight that started. Daryl threw himself at Rick, his fist in the air for just a moment before punching him hard in the jaw, the man swirling around and falling heavily to the ground. Carl yelled terrified as Daryl furiously bent down over Rick to hold him up by the shirt as Merle tried to do place his own punch as well.

They could easily kill Rick with just their fists and the pure Dixon rage.

The man I didn’t know got in the middle to separate them, Glen running from where he was with the others to help, but it was only when I placed myself between them, my back a livid Rick, facing both Daryl and Merle, a hand on each of their chests as I quipped “Okay, okay,” that they stopped.

They were breathing heavily, their expressions terrifying, two sets of reddened blue eyes throwing daggers at Rick from over my shoulders.

Rick held on to his own jaw, “Woman’s got you by the balls, Daryl.”

Ignoring my hand on his chest, Daryl tried to get to him again, making me take a couple of steps back to keep in front of him, holding him more firmly, “His children are here!”

It worked to make him stop. We all looked to where Carl was standing with Beth, crying quietly as Beth tried to shush the baby who, we could only hear now, was crying too. This seemed to sober Rick up a little as well, and after exchanging one more long, threatening look with Daryl and myself, he walked over to Beth and took Judith from her arms. At least he was careful with her, because I’d kill him – I’d really kill him with my bare hands – if he acted angrily with his kids right now. He reached a hand to make Carl follow, and he did, but we could hear him say, “No, dad! We have to go!”

“You are _my_ children, and you’re staying with me!” he told Carl as he removed himself from our sight.

“Beth,” Hershel called from where he was standing with the others near the door that lead into the building. “Come on, let’s go.”

“We can’t leave them here alone!” she said, still standing on the same spot. “I can’t leave Judith!”

I walked over to her, “We ain’t leaving them for good. We’ll find a way to bring’em too, but right now? Ain’t nothing we can do. Rick won’t listen to anyone. Gotta let it cool down,” and Beth looked at me like she could cry. “We’ll work it out. I promise, okay?”

“Hey,” I heard the unknown man’s voice. “Hi, I’m Oscar,” he reached a big hand to me. The man was so tall it felt like he was like two of me.

“Hi,” I shook his hand. “Sam.”

He smiled, “I know,” and by now the others were around us, only Daryl, Merle and Michonne, because all the others were already inside, except for Hershel, who was still waiting for his daughter by the door. “I’ll stay. Keep an eye on him,” Oscar said nodding his back towards where Rick had disappeared. “Make sure the kids are fine.”

I didn’t know the man. All I knew was that he was new and had been an inmate in the prison, but I had no idea what his deal was, why he’d been in jail or if I could trust him. It was an important task, making sure a child and a newborn were fine. So I took a look at Daryl because he knew Oscar, and silently asked him what he thought. Daryl gave me a quick nod, telling me it was fine.

“Yeah, good, it’s better that he ain’t alone in there,” I told Oscar as I looked at him again, and my eyes traveled up and down on him. He was still wearing a blue jumpsuit tied at his waist and a white tank, the old penitentiary uniform. “You been wearin’ that since _before_?”

“I, uh…” he looked down at himself and smiled self-consciously. “Yeah. But I do wash it sometimes.”

I laughed, shaking my head, “Man, we need to get you some new clothes,” he laughed too, nodding in agreement, and I looked back at Beth. “Okay? He’ll keep an eye on the kids until we can take’em with us. And he’s a big guy, he can easily tackle Rick if he has to.”

“D’you know where to find us?” Daryl asked him.

“Yeah, ten miles east, right?” Oscar confirmed.

“South of Brooks,” I conceded with a nod. “Something happens here, you go find us, ok? I’d leave you a radio but you can’t keep it charged here…”

He was nodding, “Don’t worry.”

I looked again at Beth, who seemed a bit more at ease with leaving. She nodded tying a little smile and turned to go inside with her old father, and Oscar also excused himself, leaving me alone with Daryl, Merle, and Michonne in the patio. As I turned to them, Merle had the radio close to his mouth.

“Oi, _Cabrón_ , where are ya?”

“Well, that worked out well,” Michonne said as we gathered in a circle.

I had my arm outstretched, resting on Daryl’s arm for balance. My leg was hurting a lot now and all I did was pfff sound as I shook my head.

“Yeah, I had a blast!” Merle barked still with anger in his voice.

“Least now we know what t’expect from _Rick_ ,” Daryl snarled at the man’s name and before I could agree, he added, “we gotta take care of that leg.”

On the radio, the answer finally came, Morales’s voice joining us, “Hey, I’m alright! Drove them away all this long. I’m leavin’em behind now, gonna circle back and return to the prison. Man, I gotta tell you, they’re sure dangerous and all, but thank God for their stupidity! You all safe?”

“Safe ’n sound!” Merle answered. “How long ‘til ya get here? Gonna need the space in the car, we got people moving home with’us.”

“Fifteen minutes,” he paused, “And good, ‘bout time!”

“Let’s get you inside,” Daryl said motioning me to start walking, practically carrying me there, across the door and down the stairs inside. He sat me at one of the metal tables in the common area, right in front of where Rick had held Michonne in a cell, days before. He went inside to find Hershel and Michonne sat by my side, still tense, her back erect as she looked around.

I was craving for a cigarette but didn’t want to smoke inside.

“Rick ain’t gonna jump out of a cell and kill us, Mich,” I told her, understanding her uneasiness.

“Ain’t so sure about that,” she said in a low voice. “Showed his true colors, that one.”

“Yeah, but Daryl’s right. At least now we know where he stands, won’t take us by surprise anymore. This had to happen.”

“We can’t leave the baby here. The girl was right.”

“We won’t. We’ll be coming back for the kids, just gotta… Think and plan on how to do it. Can’t just take them, it’d make things worse.”

Hershel came limping on his crutches and sat down by me, grunting at the moving effort. I lowered my pants – I had taken on using boxer shorts, modesty these days being damned – and Hershel removed the last of the thread from the stitch that had been pulled, but didn’t replace it with a new one. He just dressed the wound, leaving it to be redone later at home, with the fishing lines we had at the infirmary.

As it turned out, people didn’t actually have that many things to pack and they were done in minutes. When Morales drove through the gate that Glenn had run to open, we were all already outside, just waiting for the ride.

There was no goodbye to the prison, no longing looks to the place they were leaving behind. The only concern was the children, but for now, as we drove away from the prison, everybody was only looking ahead to the future.


	53. Day 318, part 2

The was gate slid open with the perfect timing so we didn’t have to stop or even slow down with the cars, going straight down Main Street with the gate closing on our rear, to park at the corner in front of the infirmary. On the ride home, we had communicated over the radio, and I’d asked Michonne and Andrea to take our four newcomers to the empty house by the Morales’ on Circle Street. It was a two-bedroom and we’d cleaned it already, so they all could settle there, get cleaned, rest. We could all think of the rest later, choosing permanent homes, seeing the whole Village, and meeting new people.

It was just about noon, the sun high and burning in the sky, but we were all exhausted. So as they walked away to the temporary home, Daryl walked me into the infirmary, where Miranda was already waiting for me. She made Daryl go home and leave me there with her because he was all dirty and spilled with walker blood and she didn’t want that in there. After he reluctantly left, she made me get cleaned too. I washed quickly in the infirmary shower, a cold, strong spray, and replaced all my weapons in their holsters before she redid the stitches, this time with a more proper thread that would probably be able to stand strain a bit better.

Daryl was coming out of the house when I got there, clean and stitched, and he waited for me to go up the steps. He smelled like shampoo as I passed him to get inside, and he pushed me in with a hand on my lower back, entering right behind me and closing the door. I turned to him and, eyes on his, reached for my two guns on the shoulder holster and removed them, placing both on the cabinet by the door. Then, I removed the shotgun from the back of my belt before taking all the knives I had on, resting them all with the guns, and, finally, I heavily lifted the crossbow from my back and rested it too.

His hand reached for the back of my head, urgently pulling me to him, our mouths crashing together in desperation. He opened my lips with his tongue and invaded me, taking control, hands gripping me roughly, and yet his demanding kiss was slow and just enough to get me ready for him. I let him have the control, I wanted him to own me, to feel desired and alive in his arms. I hang my arms around his shoulders and let him turn me around and press my body against the door, his chest against mine as he raised my hands over my head and pressed them to the door.

He slid his body down against mine when he buried his head on my neck, sucking my skin into his mouth until a shrieking moan came out of me, and licking the same spot to soothe it. I was breathless when he stopped and looked down at me, nose touching mine and hands still pinning me in place.

“You’re a badass, y’know that?”

I bit on my lower lip, eyes deep in his, and rounded my hip against him. He groaned barring his teeth and did the same but even rougher, pressing me against the wall with his erection and making me hiss, head falling against the door.

“D’you know how fuckin’ hot you looked out there?” he whispered hotly as he slid down again against my body, his face lowering from my collarbone to my covered breast, his mouth opened to cover it. His hot breath through the fabric sent chills down my spine and straight to my core. “Like a goddess,” he told me, and then he bit on it, hungrily, his teeth bringing me just to the edge of pain. I cried out, unbelievably turned on. “All I wanted was to be _inside_ you. Just enter you,” he punctuated it with a thrust of his hip against me “and never get out…”

“Oh, Daryl, god…” I moaned, swirling against him, my hands still pinned up, “I want you so bad…” I cried as I tried to get him to kiss me again, trying to reach him with my mouth. He complied, coming up again and taking my mouth in his, his tongue curling around mine and licking my lips. I pressed against him as much as I could and caught his lower lip between my teeth, sucking it into my mouth and biting him.

Groaning aloud in pain and desire, he finally let go of my hands and grabbed me by my waist even as he walked backwards to the couch, where he dropped carelessly and pulled me to straddle him. As I sat, my knees on the couch on his sides, Daryl was already pulling my t-shit up and lowering his mouth the skin of my stomach, unable to wait for the garment to be removed. He licked me up the tattoo under my breasts and over my sports bra as I threw the t-shirt out of me and rocked against him, my core throbbing against the feeling if his hardness inside his pants.

His hands reaching up and under my bra to grab my breasts in his hands, he looked up and kissed me again, hard and slow. I could barely find a rhythm as I kept humping him, making him let go of my mouth and rest against the back of the couch, looking at me up and down with desire in his eyes.

I reached for his belt and undid it quickly, his hands still on my breasts, pushing the bra up under my armpits. I had his pants opened in no time, in a rush, eager, and I reached inside to pull him out as I slid off his legs onto the floor. He didn’t see it coming because when I took him into my mouth he let out a startled, loud moan, a hand reaching my hair and the other gripping the cushion.

I was hungry for him, I desired this man with all my body and soul, I wanted to see come undone under me. I looked up at him, one hand holding his balls and the other sliding up his thigh to his hip and stomach, pushing the shirt up and reaching his hard, muscular chest. I paused, sliding him out of my mouth only enough to take off and toss the bra away, and then I just blew him, making the man squirm and hiss and groan aloud until he could barely take it anymore.

He reached out and made me stop, easily pulling me to my feet in front of him. I hadn’t even seen when he took his shirt off, too concentrated on his cock to see it. He reached down to my boots, trying to get them off and I helped, untying and kicking them away as fast as possible, and then he released me of my pants, biting on my hip and he slid them off.

“Come here,” he grunted, pulling me to him. All I wanted was to sit on him, take him in right now, but he didn’t let me sit, he kept pulling me up saying “No, up,” and handled me like a rag doll, making me stand on the couch and then pulling me straight to his mouth. I cried out, one hand resting on the wall behind the couch and the other entwining in his hair. I was so far gone already that it didn’t take me a minute to be trembling, rounding my hips, rubbing myself on his mouth. He rested his head on the back of the couch and let me do it, and he was moaning, adoring it, savoring, one hand holding my ass and the other entering two fingers in me over and over. I looked down at my body to see him there, his blue eyes up, deep and staring at me, and that was it. My eyes rolled back and all sound disappeared from my throat. I trembled and he held me up through wave after wave of the pleasure that rolled out of me.

My legs gave and I sat on his legs, breathless and limp. Daryl held me in place by my waist as he reached to the corner table, where he knew there was a condom in a little dish. He ripped the pack with his teeth and spit it away before taking the condom out. I took it from his hands and he held his cock for me to roll the condom down.

“Come on, baby” I whispered to him as I positioned myself, “be inside me…”

He kissed me hard then, my taste on his tongue, just as he held my hips and pulled me down on him. We bit each other’s lips at the same time, groaning when he filled me perfectly, wholly, and we rocked against each other, touching everywhere, groaning, licking, biting, kissing, and it felt unreal, it felt like he was really inside me like we were one, we had melted together to form one being, we were _made_ of the other.

We came together crying each other’s names and I swear to god I could see the universe. In his eyes, as he pulsated inside me, I saw truth and love, and I knew Daryl now really believed he was loved because he was seeing the same in my eyes, as emotion flooded out of them. I don’t know if I was orgasming or laughing or crying or if it was all at the same time.

Our bodies were hot and sweaty and flushed. Foreheads resting together, his face between my hands, his arm circling my lower back, keeping me in place, the other covering my entire back and his hand on the nape of my neck. He was still buried deep inside me, the last of his pulses still filling me as we caught our breaths.

“D’you even know how much I love you, Daryl?” I asked him in a breathless whisper and saw him just squeeze his eye shut, the arm on my lower back holding me tighter. “I love you so much…” and I started kissing his lips and his face, “You’re so loved, so loved…”

Among his labored breaths, I head a sob as he lowered his head from mine to my chest, holding me strongly against him, hiding his face. I held his head and kissed his hair as he said something but I couldn’t understand, his voice low. But even though I didn’t understand what he said, I heard the pain there and it confused me. I didn’t understand why there was pain there, there shouldn’t be, there should _never_ be pain in Daryl’s voice. So I held his face and made him look up at me.

“What?” I whispered, looking into his eyes.

But he lowered his with a confused, pained look in his face and told me “Never heard those things… Before…”

My heart clenched in my chest for him. I knew that. With the family he had, I was sure nobody ever took the time to show affection for him, as a boy or after growing up.

“I’ve told you I love you before,” I whispered to him, my hands on his face and his hair, thumbs roaming over his temples, “You’ve heard it from me.”

He nodded between my hands, “But I still don’t know how it happened. Ya hated me before…”

“I never hated you. There was a time I hated your brother, but _never_ you.”

“Ya didn’t know me… Ya still don’t know.”

“What?” I said incredulously. “ _I know you_ , Daryl.”

“Not before. You got to know me after. Ya lived there but you didn’t know me or what I did.”

He was right. After I met him at my tender 14 years old, I never had contact with him. I saw him in town from time to time, in bars, people’s parties, but never a real contact. It was like he existed in my universe, but we were never part of the same stories.

I relaxed my body away from his and slid up from his softening dick as I held the condom down on him, but stayed there, sitting on his thighs. Hands on his chest, I told him, “True… And I’d like to if you wanna tell me. But I’m sure nothing you tell me will change anything ‘bout how I love you.”

He reached down to himself to remove the condom, the proof of the pleasure I gave him secure inside. As he carefully knotted it, I slid to my right to sit on the couch, my legs over his and my back to the armrest. He dropped the condom to the floor and relaxed against the back of the couch, a little bit turned to the side to look at me, arms resting on my legs. His hair was all over the place and he looked incredible, hot enough to make me already want him again and just _adorable_ at the same time.

“Ain’t a pretty story,” he told me.

“I don’t care. Mine ain’t either.”

He looked away, thoughtful and biting on his lower lip for a while. I reached to the windowsill for a pack of cigarettes we had left there. Only four more cigarettes and I knew the other packs we’d found were also thinning up. Maybe we’d all be forced to quit smoking soon. I lit one up, took a pull, and handed it to Daryl, who accepted still in silence. I waited, resting my head on the back of the couch. He passed me back the cigarette and started talking.

And in that afternoon Daryl told me his whole life. As I listened, I could only match a few pieces of it with the little I’d known about him, his comings and goings to the house next to mine, and the occasional times I saw him around Savannah when I was there myself. I’d moved away and back a few times during life. Many of the things he said I already knew, but I let him retell them anyway, a complete story, all the things that had made Daryl the Daryl I knew.

He told me he was the youngest. Merle was 10 when he was born and Georgia only two. Their parents had always been drinkers but still managed to have a somewhat normal life with three kids to raise. They lived in Pembroke, outside Savannah. Their father, Will Dixon, had shown his domestic abuse tendencies since forever, slapping and shoving the boys whenever he thought necessary, but at that time in life, he had never touched Daryl’s mother or Georgia.

His sister got sick when he was just five years old and didn’t really understand what was happening. The parents were suffering the fear of her loss, Merle started taking care of the house at only fourteen because they were unavailable, so Daryl was somewhat left behind. Nobody took too long to think of the five-year-old boy, how he was feeling, explain to him what was happening to his sister. When she died, everything in life changed.

Merle changed. He was just a boy, a teenager who always had the mischievous tendencies. He already stole their parents’ beer, wine and the moonshine his father hid in a little shed, smoked a lot, but when Georgia was alive and then sick, he was at the house all the time, when he wasn’t at school, keeping an eye on her and on Daryl, and helping around. But now that she was dead, something broke inside him, as if Georgia had been what held Merle up and in line.

There was one of Daryl’s biggest pains. He was still there. He was just a little boy, even younger than Georgia had been, but for Merle he had not been enough to stick around, to remain in line, to stay simply _present_. Daryl felt then, at five, that he was worthless. Georgia had been worthy and he’d loved her and missed her, and he was sure he was not valid. Because without Georgia, the family fell apart, Merle left school and would stay away for days, their mother started drinking heavily, left her job and stayed on the couch or in bed all day, completely broken. She was depressed and needed help, but didn’t get any. Daryl was left to tend to himself when he had no idea how to do that. The father worked at a liqueur shop and came back drunk every day, and the violence started. He wouldn’t just hit Daryl when he did something considered wrong, he would hit and shove him for anything, to standing on his path, for crying, for asking for anything. His mother wouldn’t do anything about it and at the same time she also became the target of the ire the man had inside. He hit her for not having dinner ready when he got home, for having drunk the rest of the wine, for not having taken care of Daryl properly, the irony. When Merle was home he’d hit him too, but by now the fifteen-year-old boy had the mentality of a grown man, and a revolted one at that. He started fighting back, but not for long.

Merle went to juvie for the first time at sixteen and stayed away for eighteen months, leaving Daryl completely alone with drunk parents, a violent father. He started learning how to hide and be silent, just rarely seen around the house, and at seven he would already go out alone around town and to the woods, knowing his way back and how to avoid problems out there. He was a very smart and strong boy when he shouldn’t have needed to be. He believed he didn’t matter because even if he was still here, alive, it had been his sister’s loss that destroyed everything. He felt like he didn’t matter like he was not worthy of attention and care.

Merle had come back from juvie, but he was even more absent then, staying weeks away from home doing whatever his business was at the time. He had gotten into all sorts of drugs then, experimenting everything, still leaving Daryl there. Daryl told me he remembered one time when he decided to tell Merle about how he was being treated by their parents while he was gone, not long after he came back home. He told him nobody cared about him and he needed to even cook his own food and that his father hit him daily, and in the past weeks had been using a sharp stick to whip him in the back when he was in his angriest fits.

Merle had told him to man up and stop crying like a puss. So Daryl never talked about it again.

Like changed all over again when he was nine.

“Was playing out with the kids in the neighborhood. Could do that with Merle gone. They had bikes, I didn't. Heard sirens getting louder. They jumped on the bikes, ran after it, y’know, hoping to see somethin’ worth seein’. I ran after’em, but couldn't keep up. I ran around a corner and saw my friends lookin’ at me. Hell, I saw everybody lookin’ at me… Fire trucks everywhere, people from the neighborhood… It was my house they were there for. It was my mom in bed burnt down to nothing. That was the hard part. You know, she was just gone. Erased. Nothing left of her,” and he paused, looking away out the open window. “But she’d been gone a long time before that. Wasn’t there anymore. Guess it’s kinda what happens when you lose a child,” and he looked at me after saying that. “You got drunk too when it happened to you. Carol lost hers too and changed a lot after that. But my mom still had me. I still needed her, but that wasn’t enough. She died the day Georgia died. But then there wasn’t even a body… People said it was better that way. I don't know. Just made it seem like it wasn't real, you know?”

And then there wasn’t a mom, there wasn’t a house, no place to live, and that’s when they moved to Savannah. Will Dixon had a brother there, there was a place to live that belonged to the family, a decrepit house at Garden City. And then he was really alone, not even the friends from the neighborhood anymore. He made no new friends there, there weren’t many children at the street at the time, and at school, he was closed up inside himself and spoke to very few people.

Just a little after they moved there, Daryl adventured into the woods right behind the house. He didn’t know that place yet and got lost.

“Nine days in the woods eating berries, wiping my ass with poison oak. My old man was off on a bender with some waitress. Merle’s just gone back to juvie, soon as we got to Savannah. Nobody even know I was gone. Made my way back, though. Went straight into the kitchen and made myself a sandwich. No worse for wear. Except my ass itched something awful.”

My heart was tiny inside my chest. I knew his childhood had been tough, but I didn’t really know the extent of the neglect he’d gone through. How doesn’t a father notice his ten-year-old boy has been gone for _nine days_?

Man, I hated him, I just hated Will Dixon with all my guts and I wished he was alive, the motherfucker. I wanted to be me right now and meet that little boy and hug him, tell him he was good, that he was loved, that everything was going to be okay. Daryl saw me tearing up at that but thankfully didn’t seem to think I was pitying him. He just continued the story, his lower lip red from all the biting he put then through every time he stopped talking for a while.

Merle’s stay in juvie had been even longer this time, because this time he hadn’t just robbed someone, he had actually hurt the person. He only got out and went back home when Daryl was twelve, and by then he barely knew his older brother. He wandered around in the woods alone most part of the time, learning by himself how to hunt a track, using a BB gun to get squirrel and possums. He couldn’t care less about school and just showed up a couple of times a week, just to make it look like he still went there. It was the same school I was going to study in a few years. When he was home, he had to stay clear from his father, but it was still impossible to escape him all the time. When he was under the influence of moonshine, Daryl was a target.

By the time Daryl was fourteen, hormonal and frustrated, be started destroying things with his gun. He liked to shoot street lamps, road signs, random house windows. But never anything alive. He adored animals and nature, and would only shoot one living thing when he really wanted to hunt them and never let them go to waste. He learned to cut and clean every species of animal and cooking them, so their death had a purpose. It was also around this age that Daryl got his first real gun, a bigger responsibility. It was a gift from his uncle, the one they’d all moved to Savannah to be near to, but would rarely see.

And as he was growing up, Merle seemed a bit more interested in being close to him, like he hadn’t been all these years. He started taking him along to bars and people’s places, teaching him all kinds of things. Things learned from the Merle he was back then were not good things at all, but he was all Daryl had. The only older, experienced person who cared about him in some way and Daryl got attached to him, listening and absorbing everything he said. He started fighting back the bullies at school and to bully others himself, trying to be more confident, or at least to seem to be, but he knew it all only made him more of an asshole than brave or secure of himself.

He got alone again soon, though, because Merle enlisted to the army. He’d never told Daryl he was thinking about it, just told him during breakfast that he was leaving and didn’t know when he’d come back, just like that. Daryl felt lost and alone again, his father yelling he hoped Merle died in combat. It was the third time Merle was leaving him, and Daryl convinced himself he didn’t care, that he was better off without him. He actually was better off without him. Merle was away by the time I moved to the house when Daryl was sixteen and had already stopped pretending to go to school, dropping out altogether, so even when I moved there I never saw him at school.

He was a muscular boy at sixteen. Practically living in the woods had molded his body, his arms were strong, his neck thick, the constant angry and focused look on his face making him look mysterious and dangerous. This is what I saw when he came out of the woods the day we spoke and he told me to fuck off. If I’d known then that he acted like that because of all the shit he’d already been through in life, maybe I’d kept on speaking to him. Or not… I don’t know, I was not in a good place myself at fourteen.

I remembered fights happening at the house. I remembered Will Dixon in my teens more than I remembered Daryl or Merle. It was clearly the man to stay away from, always drunk and yelling and looking over at Bobby and myself from his porch as he scratched his crotch.

Damn, how could his son be so, so different from him?

It was at sixteen that Daryl went down the wrong path. He was drinking and experimenting with drugs and getting into fights around town, and he was definitely the kind of boy I was attracted to back then, but I didn’t see him often enough to notice that. I didn’t even notice when, two years later, Daryl turned eighteen and moved out. It took a long time for me to figure he didn’t live next door anymore because then it was just old Dixon getting worse and worse, no sign of his youngest. Merle came back home after being forced to leave the army in the same year and they moved in together in a trailer park. Merle went right back into his old habits, working for a drug dealer as a guard. The drug supply was rich for them at the time, and it was when Daryl decided not to get into it too deep and kept just smoking pot and drinking while Merle dove right into meth and cocaine.

Daryl got jobs here and there as a handyman, house painter, and they moved a lot from trailer park to trailer park. However, even trying his best, Daryl did get involved with the drug dealer. He helped Merle with his muscle work from time to time and made a few large deliveries for a while, but ended up being their mechanic. The gang had many cars and motorcycles and Daryl was good at it, so he started working for them, maintaining all their vehicles. Cops knew who he was even though there was never proof he or Merle were involved, and Daryl spent the night in jail a few times, only to be released the next morning to start all over again.

Daryl was 27 when Will Dixon died. He spent nine years out of the house with Merle, just getting by, but they both moved back when the old threat was not there anymore. They didn’t have to pay rent anymore and settled there for all eight years from then until the world ended. I didn’t live at my house then, but I remembered noticing their presence again and their father’s absence when I returned. That’s what Daryl’s job was, a mechanic for the traffic. Merle had been downgraded from the dealer’s main guard to just one of the others after he nearly overdosed and was deemed not trustworthy enough anymore.

“This thing we got here, you ‘n I?”, he asked me after telling it all, as he took my hand in his, squeezing tight, “I never had that. Never had a girlfriend before. Can count on my fingers the women I dated. Hell, didn’t even date for real, it was just… Never like this, not even close.”

I didn’t really understand what he was saying. It made no sense! What the fuck did he mean, he was only with a few women in his life? What about all the things he did to me in bed? He seemed so experienced!

“But wait,” I said with my lips around another cigarette, “that don’t add up.”

“What?”

“That you didn’t fuck around a lot.”

“Why not?

I laughed, “Have you seen yourself? You ‘n I didn’t talk but I knew how good you looked. If I could see it, other women could see it.”

He was shy, a little, tiny smile on his lips and he looked down at my legs, “It ain’t like I was nothing special… And I was an asshole.”

“I’ve met assholes, baby, and they had no trouble getting laid.”

He shrugged timidly, “Think I just went for it when I knew it was just a fuck, knowing there wasn’t gonna be anything more.”

“No intimacy,” I summed up.

He looked back at me nodding and took the cigarette from my fingers, “Didn’t want that.”

“I get it.”

“Don’t think any of’em ever saw’em. On my back.”

I nodded quietly, “You didn’t want me to touch’em either…”

“Wasn’t ‘cause of you,” he told me instantly, his head falling again against the couch, looking at me sideways. “Was me.”

“I know. I hope ya know now that you don’t gotta be ashamed of’em. None of that was your fault. It was things that happened to you, that you didn’t cause,” he nodded but was thoughtful, looking away and again biting on the skin inside his lip. “How did it feel like?” I asked. “When he died?”

He took a long moment, looking out the window over my head again. The lowering sun reflected in his eyes, making the blue even clearer and his skin golden, the failed blonde and grey beard seeming to shine in that light. _Beautiful._

“I hated what I felt,” he started, still looking far away to that point in his past. “’Cause what I felt was not what I thought I was ‘spose to be feelin’. I was ‘spose to feel sad that my dad died. To feel… Somethin’, anythin’. But it was nothin’ but,” and he frowned, looking down at me, “Relief.”

I absorbed it for a moment, understanding him, “And you hated yourself for feeling it?”

“Yeah. For a long time. Don’t think I do no more. All’s different now. Ain’t just the dead rising. I got more now than I did my whole life, and none o’ that’s cause of him or anything he ever did for me.”

“It’s ‘cause o’ you,” I completed.

“And you,” he added instantly. “A home like this,” he said swiping his eyes over the living room and kitchen and looking back at me, “it’s a first. Havin’ people need me, be important for something, for someone,” and he paused, his eyes intense on mine, “Being loved? And loving someone the way I love you? Ain’t never happened and I never thought it woulda happen. It’s why I don’t know how it happened.”

“It happened that day,” I explained. “The day you protected me and we joined each other. We became partners that day, and in everything we got here, and in everything we’ll still do and build, we’re partners. You being my partner changed my life for the better, you being by my side and loving me… Makes me happy like I never was in life.”

“You make me happy too,” he told me with a sheepish smile but didn’t look away this time. “Specially with all the not being dead thing.”

I leaned towards him and we kissed, still smiling. What I told him about being happy could not be more true. The world had to end and the dead had to rise for us to finally find each other.

And now that life was being rebuilt, we’d get to make things work the right way. With Daryl by my side, I felt like I was capable of doing anything I wanted.


	54. Day 320, part 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I'm a little self-conscious about this one. I personally really like how it turned out but it may be a little out there. I really hope you guys like it. Let me know what you think!
> 
> And thank you all so much for the comments and support! This story and you all have been helping me keep centered in those hard times. Love you all!

The last thing I thought I’d be doing in the new life after an apocalypse was paperwork, but here I was, sitting across from Mikki at my kitchen table, small piles of paper between us and a goddamn _spreadsheet_ right in front of me. Seriously, a handwritten spreadsheet. It had been so long since I’d _written_ anything that my handwriting was a terror. My right hand was more used to holding knives and triggers than a ballpoint pen these days. But I carried on putting information on paper with Mikki, lists, and lists of names of people, location residency, each one’s jobs, supplies, food, weapons, plans and ideas, and Merle’s even worse, almost unreadable handwriting with the security schedules.

I may have groaned at all of it.

“Power through, honey,” Mikki told me without looking up from whichever paper she’d been reading. “We’ll just put it all together and then I’ll keep it up.”

“But there’s still so much! And I hate paperwork.”

“Okay, let me distract you then, let’s talk about…” she started rummaging through the papers to find a specific one. “Here. We might need to make a change to this one.”

“On housing?” I said as I took it. “Why?”

“Becaaaause,” and she paused holding one hand on the other and resting her arms on the table, leaning down a little as if she was going to tell me _the best_ gossip ever, one well-made, curved eyebrow rising up high, “Will told me last night that he and Andrea might be moving in together.”

Since Ma died, only three days ago, my plans for everyone to move out of Main Street could come to action. I wouldn’t have made her move at that stage of life, so we’d wait. Now we were going to do it immediately, and with Mikki and I working in the organization of the Village since yesterday, a little sketch of where each one lived and what we’d do to the houses there had come up. Mikki and Will would have to move from their house, and so would Andrea, who lived at the corner, and Merle, who lived across the street from them.

“Really?” I asked, impressed. “Thing’s serious then?”

She raised her hands and curved let lips down, “I guess!”

“I thought they was just banging!” I said and Mikki laughed out loud.

“Will doesn’t just _bang_. He was always a serious-relationship-guy.”

“Good. Good for Andrea,” I nodded firmly. “We all can use some stability these days.”

“Yeah,” she said thoughtfully. “And you know… When I told Merle that?” _oh, good_ , here was the real gossip then! “He kind of blurted out that maybe we should do it too.”

Oh, hold on a minute! What?

I mean, _what_? _Merle_?!

My face must have said it all because I didn’t have to say anything for Mikki to nod slowly with her eyes wide open, confirming what I had heard.

“And he got surprised he said that,” she continued. “That he just blurted it without thinking, you know? And he tried to cover it up saying that we didn’t have to, that there are plenty of houses, that it was just an idea, just a stupid idea, forget it, nevermind. You know?”

I made a very weird sound with my throat as I nodded and then asked, “What d’you say?”

“I couldn’t say anything, he just bolted!” and she laughed. “Oh, poor Merle, he’s still _so_ confused…”

“Still?” I asked impressed. “But you’re already together!”

“We are, but for someone like Merle… With his Dixon background? I mean, no offense to Daryl –”

“I know what you mean. I’m surprised with him, in a good way. He’s overcoming a lot.”

“He’s not ready. He’s really not ready. He’s most definitely not ready!”

“I got it!” I laughed with her. “But are you?”

“No… I’m not, either. It’s hard for me – to trust a man, I mean”, she said, the laughter gone and an old sadness passing through her eyes. “I’ve been screwed up bad before, Sam. Men like Merle, like the Merle I know him to have been before? They’ve given me hell.”

“Shit, I can imagine… This kinda man give hell to all women, but if ya add transphobia to that it’s even worse,” I said and she agreed with a nod. “But does he treat you well?”

“He does. Like none other did before. Even fighting against his old demons, he’s never mistreated me.”

“Mikki, you gotta know that Merle’s my brother, I love him and I respect and trust him. But if he ever does anything, I mean _anything_ against you, you come to me. I ain’t havin’ any sort of abuse inside these walls, okay?”

She was smiling as she nodded, “Okay. But I don’t think I’ll ever need, really. I’ve got my old traumas with men and the uneasiness still exist, but my rational part sees all he does and how he acts. But even so, the fact is that he isn’t ready, and I am not ready.”

“So don’t move in together, not yet. It ain’t simple living with a man. Daryl and I are still on a honeymoon phase and I haven’t found out the annoying things yet, but I will, and he will too, and we’ll have to deal with it. I know it’s happenin’.”

“Honeymoon phase, huh?” she wiggled her eyebrows with a knowing smile.

I laughed, “Girl, you got _no idea_!” and after we both laughed, I returned to the original talk, “Let’s not change anything here yet, I want Andrea and Will to come to tell about their moving in together themselves. And after you talk to Merle about it, we’ll add where each one of you live. It’s no big deal, this ain’t our priority now.”

“Yes, and our priority is…” she elongated the word as she looked for another paper, found it, and placed on top of the others, “Jobs!”

I’d been trying to gather information from each Village member on what they could do best and what they wanted to do. The _wanted_ part was important to me because I wanted everyone happy with their jobs. Being unhappy professionally should be something from the old world. I wanted them happy here doing what they did best. I was realist enough to know it wouldn’t always be possible, but I’d do my best.

Everyone who could fight would be included in the guard rotations. That excluded Miranda, Hershel, Beth, David, and Emma. Miranda and Hershel should always be safe because they were our doctors, position among the highest importance. Emma, it was obvious why. I wanted her learning how to fight and shoot, getting physically strong and losing the fear, but also practicing and learning more how to read and write and do basic math. Her only job was to _learn_. About David and Beth, they both could already shoot, but their confidence with it was still not enough. We’d do a tougher training with them both before putting them on guard alone or sending them out there.

Hershel was also going to be overseeing the gardens we had already started, but still unsuccessfully. We had many little envelopes of seeds we’d taken from a gardening store and he said it was enough to start. There were squash, carrots, beets, green beans, tomatoes, corn, and a few fruits too. If it all took and bloomed we’d have food for the whole season and the next. Hershel seemed excited about it when we showed him all the seeds and started making plans and asking for helpers.

With Morales still overseeing anything related to construction and Mikki talking care of all the maintenance, they would both work with everyone in rotation. Everyone would help with building the brick wall, but at the same time, the construction of the communal stations at Main Street would start promptly. There was already a table posed there temporarily, the biggest one we’d been able to find in the houses, but still small, and we’d be using it and the water hoses and buckets around it as a cleaning station for anything that was brought from outside. We’d build it all better as soon as possible.

Going out there on runs for looting and gathering useful stuff would have to be an even more common occurrence from now on, with more people to feed and willing to go out to do it. Michonne would organize them, and she was still deciding if it was better to go out there always on twos or threes. We’d have these small teams set for the short, nearby runs, and larger teams for the bigger ones. Groups would have to go out every three or four days if we wanted to keep all the plans going.

After having stuff more organized since yesterday, we could all focus on working on our buildings. The infirmary would move to where Andrea lived, it was a more spacious, two-bedroom house. Merle’s old house was to become the office and Ma’s would be the storage. The Morales’ would move to Second Street, to a three-bedroom, where they’d live with David and Emma, officially now.

With it all out of the way, we could move on to other priorities, like the construction of the wall and the run to get bricks and cement, like the ideas for outer reinforcements – I was thinking spikes and spears stuck on the hedges, pointing out as to pierce through any walker that came close to it – and the list of places we planned to hit to get supplies. Pharmacies, grocery stores, storage rooms, hospitals, they were all a common knowledge already, places we would never stop going through, but we’d have to start varying it. Libraries to get some knowledge on how to do stuff none of us had ever had to do before, shooting stands, construction sites, factories, furniture, and kitchen stores, garages, warehouses, farms or ranches were we’d see if we still could find living animals like cattle or horses.

All of those ideas were on paper so I’d make sure to do through all of them sooner or later, but for now, I’d had enough of papers. I got up from the table and stretched my back as Mikki piled up the papers, separating them by subject. I don’t know how I’d do that without her. Honey got up from her nap under the table and stretched too. I needed some coffee but, looking in the kitchen cabinet, I remembered we were out of grounded coffee, so I left the house with Mikki when she was done, Honey following us happily, running around and playing with anything she found, to go get some coffee at her place. I’d get more from the storage when I went back home later.

From the corner of Main Street, we saw the red and white Silverado in which Daryl and Merle had gone out yesterday before sunrise parked on the area by the gate, and both brothers hopping out of it. My heart jumped in my chest, my mouth going dry. There was my man, god, how I missed him! One night without him in my bed was way too long.

“Dammit,” Mikki said by my side as we both started walking faster up the street. “We’re damned with those Dixons, aren’t we?”

“Fuckin’ damned,” I said smiling and shaking my head just as Daryl turned to look down the street from where he was at the back of the truck, he and Merle getting the back hatch open, and his eyes fell on me.

Abandoning the door and whatever he was about to take from there, he started walking fast in my direction and I did too, taking the few last steps to a sprint even as I lifted the crossbow strap from me, took it off and let it fall to the ground, and I all but jumped on him, my hands on his shoulders propping me up to encircle his hips with my legs. His strong arms held me in a tight, firm hug around my back as my mouth crashed down on his. He let out an _oof_ in surprise before kissing me back just as deeply.

“Hey, get a room!”

Our lips parting, we both looked sideways to see Merle with his arm around a giggling Mikki, who gave him a smack on his stomach for teasing us. Still holding me up is his arms, Daryl simply turned away from them and walked away, my face falling to his neck, kissing him there as he lifted one arm to flip his middle finger back at Merle.

“You okay?” I whispered.

“Fine. Just miss ya like crazy,” he groaned, carrying me towards the little parking lot we had right there at the entrance by the gate. He walked to the farthest car, away from anybody’s eyes, and sat me on the hood, standing between my legs.

We kissed again as if we needed it to be able to breathe. I clawed at him, at all I could reach, my hands moving from his chest to his back to his stomach. I felt his back muscles twitch under my hands as my nails traveled down under his vest, over his shirt. He hissed, parting his lips from mine with a bite on my lower lip before his hand twisted my head to the side, exposing my neck for him to lick and kiss.

“Oh, my Daryl… I love you so much…”

“Love ya more,” he whispered looking back at me again for a moment before kissing me again.

My hands were under his shirt in the next second, my hands gliding against his hard muscles, his skin warm and damp with sweat. His hand was sliding up my thigh when a sharp, loud whistle called twice in quick succession, startling us away from each other. He still stood between my legs when he looked over my shoulder and I twisted my body to look back at the street. We saw Merle on his tiptoes, stretching his neck to be able to see us from there, and when he did, he motioned widely with his arms to beckon us there.

Something had happened. Darryl stepped back and I slid from the hood of the car, both of us moving together back among the cars towards the street. Seeing Merle near the platform, Glenn up on it squatting down to speak to him, I hurried there, calling “What’s up?” even before I reached them. Daryl was right behind me and Michonne, Carol, and Maggie arriving at the same time. Even Honey followed.

Glenn looked from Merle to me, “Two men asking to speak to someone named _Lynn_?” he asked making a questioning face at the strange name.

Merle looked at me and we both shared a look with Michonne too.

“Who’s Lynn?” Daryl asked.

“It’s me,” I told him and looked around at the others. “Middle name. It’s how the Governor knew me.”

“They’re from Woodbury,” Merle concluded.

I looked up at Glenn again, “Just two? How many cars?”

“Just two guys on foot, no cars. Didn’t seem threatening to me.”

“Weapons?” Michonne asked him.

“None visible, nothing in hands. Could be hiding, of course.”

“And they just asked to talk?” I confirmed and Glenn nodded. “Alrigh’, come down, I’m goin’ up,” Glenn started down the ladder immediately. “Merle, you’re with me, wanna see if ya recognize these guys. Can I have the rifle?” I asked Glenn as his feet hit the ground and he handed it to me. “Unlock the gate but keep it closed, I want you all to be able to open it and shoot the fuck outta them if I give you the sign.”

Merle was already going up and as I climbed up behind him, he pointed his gun down at the street, at the men. I did the same, loudly cocking the rifle and pointing out, trying to find the aim even before I saw them.

Both raised their hands above their heads without even being asked to. They were side by side so there was no knowing who was in charge. But I did see, instantly, what Glenn had meant when he said they didn’t seem threatening. One was overweighed, black beard and curly black hair, and his almond-shaped, worried eyes looking up at me. The other also had a beard that seemed a bit too well groomed for this new world; long, straight brown hair, and he was wearing a long, black coat that came down to his knees. He could be hiding anything under there.

“How can I help you, gentleman?”

“You’re Lynn?”

“Yep. Who are _you_?”

“My name is Paul,” the long-coat men said using his lifted up hand to point down at himself. “But my friends call me Jesus –”

“There ain’t no way I’m calling you Jesus, Paul,” I cut him off.

He breathed out a laugh and nodded, “Fair enough. And this is Jerry. We’re from Woodbury.”

I looked briefly sideways at Merle, tying to see any sign he knew these men. Feeling my eyes on him, he looked back at me and shook his head minutely.

“Never seen any of ya asses down there,” he said aloud when he looked back at them.

“Neither of us was in security,” Jerry said, his hands still up. “But I remember you. You’re Merle, right?”

“You were his lieutenant,” Paul completed Jerry’s thought. “I was a teacher for the children, and Jerry worked at the gardens. That’s why you don’t remember us.”

None of this really mattered, so I cut the chat, “What do you want?”

“Look,” Paul said taking a short step forward, and both Merle’s gun and my rifle rose a bit more in attention. He stopped, his hand going up a bit higher. “We know what he did to you and your community. The Governor. The taking you and your friends hostage and the torturing thing? We didn’t know then, but we know now. Things have changed in Woodbury in the past few days since you were there.”

“You’re the new leader?”

He breathed out a laugh again like he’d done before, “I guess…”

“He is,” Jerry informed with more certainty than Paul. “I help but, yeah.”

“After that night when we found the Governor dead, turned but unable to move because if his broken neck, one of his guards took over. Started giving orders and demanding stuff, and he gathered everyone and told us all the Governor did, said this was how things worked at Woodbury, but nobody accepted it. There was a fight.”

“It turned to shit,” Jerry blurted and looked from me to Paul, a little bashful maybe at his language. “People who had never fought before turned against him and his men. They were outnumbered.”

“Did you kill them?”

They took a few seconds to answer, but then Paul did, with a definite nod, “Yes.”

“Do you know who killed the Governor?”

“No. We know it was one of you, that night,” Pau answered. “But I don’t think it matters. They told us the story, you were all just fighting back.”

“We sure as hell were,” I said, just a tiny bit more at ease but still holding them under my aim. “What do you want?”

“We need help.”

* * *

Tyrese was up on the platform keeping the same rifle trained on the two men outside. Sasha was at the unlocked gate, peaking at them through a small gap while I gathered in the middle of the street with the others. We were a group of nine in a circle.

“It ain’t like we did it on purpose!” Daryl opined angrily.

“We owe’em nothin’!” Merle agreed with his brother. “Them fucker’s the one who owes us!”

“But I drove it straight to their gate!” Morales stressed. “I did it!”

“ _We_ did it. We,” I said looking straight at Mo. “Was us, not you.”

“There are families there?” Michonne questioned.

“Yeah, he says it’s a group of like forty-five people,” I said. “Two-thirds of it? Families who never had to fight before. Elders, housewives, children.”

“They can’t be left out there,” Glenn opined.

“Group’s camped somewhere tween’us and Woodbury,” Merle explained, “southwest from the Village, right in the middle of an open fuckin’ field. Says they thought it was safer ‘cause they can see walkers comin’ from far.”

“If they still think walkers’ the worst that can happen,” I said looking down with my hands in my hips, shaking my head, “they got a lot to learn. They won’t make it out there.”

“Do they have supplies?” Carol asked with her arms crossed. “Weapons, food?”

I was already shaking my head when I answered, “Not enough. Some of them got knives but they have just a few guns and not much ammo. They’re a short walk away from a stream, so they got water, but are running low on food. Said they had no time to pack stuff with’em then they escaped. The armory is still stored at Woodbury.”

“So you wanna bring’em all in here?” Daryl asked from where he stood by my side.

There was the big question. _Goddamnit!_ I couldn’t leave these people there! None of what’d happened was their fault, there were children there, and they got overrun by the herd we had driven away from the prison. With inexperienced people having to protect the town, it didn’t take minutes for their security to be breached, and the herd invade Woodbury. Many had died, only a little over half of the citizens making it out alive. They were in the middle of nowhere now, scarred and traumatized. Thinking all of it, I took a moment to answer, coming to a decision.

“Not for good, but we’ll help’em. Move them in for a while, ‘til we can clear up Woodbury.”

“Clear up?” Andrea asked in surprise and clear disagreement. “You wanna go there and clear all the walkers? Go straight into a herd?”

“Well, they need a place to live!” I argued and looked from Andrea to all the others, “I ain’t bringing forty-five new people we know nothin’ about to live in here. We’re the reason they don’t got a home now, even if we didn’t mean to do it,” and after a pause, I asked, “You’re with me?”

I heard everyone agree instantly and I couldn’t help but smile and I nodded in thanks to them all.

“First of all, we gotta let these two in,” I said pointing over my shoulder with a thumb. “Merle, what do you wanna do?”

“My baby brother here and I are goin’ out there to search’em for weapons, take whatever they got. Want all you others around us aimin’ at’em as we do it and bring’em inside,” and then he pointed a finger at me, “you wait inside. We’ll lower the weapons at your signal.”

“Isn’t that a bit too much?” Maggie asked, a little uncomfortable. “She said they don’t seem threatening.”

“Not seeming threatening is no guarantee of anything,” Michonne explained darkly. 

“Not just that,” Daryl explained. “We’ll have’em know who’s in charge here. They _they’re_ the ones who listen.”

“Alright, let’s do this,” I said and everyone moved at the same time, armed and ready, to the gate. As they slid it open loudly, I ran to where I’d left the crossbow on the asphalt, picked it up, pulled the string to cock it, and walked back to the are in front of the gate as I took an arrow from the holster and armed it. I stood there, seeing the scene in front of me on the street, Maggie and Sasha both posting themselves by my sides. Neither of us really pointed the weapons we had at hand, but held them quite visibly in front of us. Michonne, Andrea, Carol, Glenn, and Morales had formed a circle and were all pointing their weapons at the two men as Merle searched Jerry and Daryl searched Paul. Both still had their arms up and accepting looks on their faces. I saw both Dixons take at least two knives from each man and telling them something before making them walk ahead of them into the Village, all others following still with their weapons trained on their heads. They stepped in front of me and stood there, hands still posed up. I looked from over their shoulders to the gate to see it being slid closed again on their backs.

“Y’can put your hands down,” I took mercy on them. Jerry looked to be in pain and lowered his arms heavily with a relieved sigh. “Nobody from Woodbury is to carry any sorta weapon when inside these walls. Only _we_ can carry. That clear?”

Jerry nodded and Paul asked, “Does that mean you’re helping us?”

I looked quickly from Daryl to Merle and lowered my head sharply in a single nod. They lowered the weapons they had raised after searching them and all others did the same, now pointing at the ground. Jerry and Paul looked back at them all and back at me, Jerry with a smile. I took a step closer to them and stretched a hand at Paul.

“Name’s Sam. Gave the Governor my middle name, Lynn.”

Paul accepted my hand and we shook firmly. “It’s nice to meet you, Sam.”

“Thank us later,” and I let go of his hand, offering it to Jerry, who shook my hand with a smile on his face, his eyes nearly closing as he did so. “Something you should know,” I said, letting go of Jerry’s hand and looking again at Paul. “I’m the one who killed the Governor. It was me. Broke his neck with my bare hands. Just so you know.”

Paul nodded, “We knew it was one of you. It really doesn’t matter.”

“We can see why you did it,” Jerry told me. “You’ve got a good place going on here, from what I can see. Had something to protect, people to protect.”

“You help us get those people to safety?” Paul affirmed and asked at the same time. “If you ever have to fight for this place again, Woodbury will fight by your side.”

I was nodding, glad to hear it. I had a good feeling about this.

“Just one more question for now,” I told them before I could allow myself to relax. “How many walkers have you killed?”


	55. Day 320, part 2

As Daryl walked down Main Street with a huge, heavy deer thrown across his shoulders, we all followed, Jerry and Paul looking around curiously. The regular guard schedule continued, with Glenn returning to the platform. As I watched Daryl with his big dick walk making his way down to the corner, where we had the temporary, improvised working station with an ugly, oval green formica table, buckets, and a water hose, I could feel the pride swell in my chest, making me smile. He had gone out there with Merle the morning before to hunt, but both Dixons and I knew Daryl’s hunting skills had exceeded Merle’s years ago. The deer had been his catch and it would feed us all for a long while.

Well, that before we knew we’d have around forty people over for dinner tonight.

We were joined by most of the others when we got near the corner and Daryl flopped the deer onto the table, which nearly tumbled down under its weight but held. I explained to the others who hadn’t heard it all what we were doing, and at the same time let Paul and Jerry know what was going to happen. Some of them, all women, volunteered to stay and take care of cleaning and cooking the deer for tonight and to prepare some houses to receive the Woodbury group. With others staying in guard at the Village, only six of us would go with Paul and Jerry. I felt like we could use even fewer people, but preferred to stay on the safe side. If what Paul had said about most of them being unable to fight was true, they’d need us to have their backs on the way back home.

“So they’re not staying here?” Hershel asked from where he leaned on his armpit crutch.

“No,” I said firmly as I shook my head, and I looked at Paul. “We’re helping them ‘cause the herd’s only taken Woodbury ‘cause we led it straight there,” and I raised a hand, “ _Unintentionally_ , of course, but yeah. But they ain’t moving in here. We ain’t forgetting these are the people who _cheered_ when the Governor tried to have the Dixons fight to death in an arena.” Both Paul and Jerry looked down as they heard it, bashfully. There certainly was no arguing that. “So as soon as the place is cleared, they’re moving back in there.”

With all agreed, people dispersed and I turned to go to the storage house with Daryl, Merle, Michonne, Sasha, and Glenn, who at Merle’s others had climbed down the platform to be replaced by Mikki.

“What about the kids?” Beth’s voice sounded from behind me and I turned to see her standing there in the middle of the street, looking straight at me. “You said we’d go back for them,” she continued and crossed her arms. “It’s been two days!”

“I know how long it’s been,” I said as I stepped closer to her. “And we’ll get to it, but right now –”

“They’re still in there!” she cut me off. “Judith’s still in there, and Carl, and you’re all going on some _other_ rescue mission?!”

“Beth –”

“No!” she cut me again with a loud cry uncrossing her arms. “I only left because you said we’d go back for them!”

“I’m not sayin’ we won’t!” my voice imitated hers, trying to get her to let me finish a whole sentence. “But right now, there’re other children out there where it ain’t safe.”

“The prison isn’t safe either!” she rebutted. “You said so yourself. Carl and Judith aren’t safe in there!”

“They’re with their _father_ , Beth. Their safety is _his_ responsibility, he said so himself. He can fight and shoot, he can protect them. These people out there, many of them who are _children_ too, don’t have that.”

Beth huffed and crossed her arms stubbornly. With her always being sweet and caring, it had been easy to forget she was still just a kid, but it was clear now. Teenager stubbornness.

“Then I’m going back there,” she said firmly in a daring tone.

I looked over her shoulder where Hershel was standing, listening to it all. He shook his head, attesting he would not allow her to do it.

“No,” I said.

“ _What_?” she asked angrily.

“Beth, listen to me,” I tried to keep my cool. I wasn’t the most patient person and right now? I felt like telling her to lower her tone the fuck down and let the adults deal with the important stuff. I didn’t want to be that person, though. I didn’t want to be that kind of leader. “Rick is their father. He’s the one who’s responsible for them. We all want’em here where we can see they’re safe? Of course we do, but ain’t no way we’ll be bringing’em if Rick don’t agree to it. _We ain’t kidnaping those kids_ ,” I said and I saw that Beth kinda came to her senses by hearing it. She was the kind of person who couldn’t even hear about the possibility of committing such a crime. “So I all comes down to him either way. They’re with him, their dad, and it’s all fine for now. Oscar gave us his word, he’d come looking for us if anything happened, didn’t he?” and she nodded as she looked down to her feet. “I know ya care ‘bout’em and I promised you we’d go back for’em, and we will. But you gotta be more patient, you gotta trust that a _father_ will keep _his kids_ safe.” I paused leaning down a bit to be able to see her lowered face. “And one more thing? You gotta stop yelling at me,” she looked up at me then. “Alright?”

She took just a second to nod, looking down again. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay. I want you to keep telling me what’s on your mind. Always, ok? But just… _Talk_ to me. I won’t always agree but I’ll listen.”

* * *

We heard it before we saw it from the road. Something like forty people were forming an almost perfect circle in the middle of the field. Shots were echoing far as the car accelerated even more.

“Hold on!!” I heard Sasha call our loud from the driver’s seat, through the back window. I was on the bed of the truck with Daryl, Merle, and Paul. Leaving the road, the bumps and rough terrain make us have to grab anything we could strongly, but in seconds the car stopped and we jumped out, boots heavily hitting the grass as we started to run.

“Save the bullets!” I yelled at everyone. “We can take’em on hand!”

They weren’t many, but the circle of people right in the middle was screaming in terror, some men around them shooting the best they could. We ran. By my side, Daryl shot an arrow that crunched straight into the rotting head of a walker who’d been pretty near the group.

“Hold your fire!” I heard Paul yell from where he ran ahead of us, already reaching the group, and he immediately took out a walker with a hunting knife.

The others followed his orders and the shots stopped instantly, and then we were on them, taking out walker after walker with knives, axes, arrows, and sword. I circled the terrified group, my crossbow aimed at the head of a walker that was stumbling in the direction of the screams. The crowded group was crying, holding each other, only not running away in terror because walkers were coming from all directions.

Seriously. It was like they have never seen a fucking walker in their life. Which I knew was not true since there were walkers inside Woodbury at the arena where these very same people were cheering for Daryl and Merle to fight to death.

Then again, they thought we were terrorists and had deserved what was happening. We’d all probably have to talk more about this in the future. For now, my people and I were just trying to keep these people alive.

“Silence, you all!” I called, making the walker look at me now. “Stop screaming!” I instead when they didn’t stop. “Noise attracts’em! Don’t you know nothin’?”

They did stop somewhere around when I released an arrow to that walker’s forehead and bent down to cock and load again.

Something like twenty were down already when another scream pierced the air. It was louder than the others and pained, standing out among the terror cries still coming from the group. I removed my knife from a skull – I’d run out of arrows about three walkers ago – blood splattering out with it and over my arm, and turned, looking for the source. The grass was tall and all I could see was its back as it was doubled over something on the ground. That something was blood curling screaming.

I ran to it and grabbed the hair of the back of its head between my fingers. A chunk of flesh was between its teeth as was pulled out from the man’s chest as I pulled it back and slammed the knife into the decaying skull. As I shoved the walker to the side and away from the men, a woman came screaming and crying desperately to double over the agonizing, screaming man on the ground. I took a few steps back, breathing hard, and looked around. Other than the bitten man and the woman’s cries, it was all silent, the groans and moans gone, the group’s terror sounds fading slowly.

Paul came running, his face splattered in blood, and stopped to a halt by my side, looking at the couple on the ground.

“Oh, Mr. Daniels…” he breathed out.

I shook my head, drying the sweat on my forehead with the back of my hand. “Sorry, man…” I told him. “Are there more?”

He nodded sadly, “Three others. If we hadn’t come now, there’d be even more.”

I placed a hand on his shoulder and slapped in once before turning away from the group that was forming around Mr. Daniels to go find my people. Daryl was coming in my direction already, arms lifted above his head to place the crossbow across his back, a handful of arrows in his hand.

“Everyone ok?” I asked him.

“Yeah, nothing we ain’t done before,” he said as he looked ahead of me to the dying man on the ground.

“Come on…” I said as I started walking again, rounding him and being followed instantly. “Let’s let’em deal with it.”

One by one, everyone from my group gathered around our car. Merle climbed up to the roof, looking around and taking guard right after having Glenn do the same on the rear. I sat on the hood, feet planted on the metal bumper and elbows on my knees.

“Good thing we got the deer when we did,” Daryl said as he leaned to rest against the car by my side, a cigarette between his lips. He lit it up and took a pull.

“But we coulda kept the meat for a while,” I said looking away at the grieving group. “Keep one freezer going and have food for a while. Now it’ll all be gone in one meal. It’s a damn shame.”

“We’ll go out and get more once we get this done,” he reassured me. “Was more than one track. Another adult ‘round the woods somewhere,” and he looked up and sideways at me. “We’ll get it.”

I looked down at him with a smirk, “I don’t doubt it.”

When I looked back at the group, reaching for Daryl’s cigarette wordlessly, Paul was walking towards us. He looked defeated, downcast.

“We’ve put them together,” he let us know. “One’s dead already, we’re just giving the others time to say goodbye to the other three.”

“Ya done kill the brain?” Daryl asked him.

“Yeah…” he said resting his hands on his hips and looking away from us, thoughtful. “Yeah, I did it as soon as he died.”

“You seriously gotta get these people trained,” I told Paul after blowing the smoke and handing the cigarette back to Daryl. “Urgently, dude.”

He was nodding and about to answer but Michonne spoke first, “How do _you_ know how to do it if you were a teacher at Woodbury? Kill the dead? We just saw you fighting, you’ve got the moves.”

“I wasn’t always at Woodbury,” he explained. “They took me in a couple months ago, three at most, I think. Being out here teaches you things.”

“Sure does…” I agreed as I eyed an unknown man from their group approach us. Paul turned to look at him as well.

“Jesus? Mr. Daniel’s just passed. If you wanna…” he left the sentence unfinished, pointing over his shoulder with this thumb.

Paul breathed out pained, looked down and shook his head, “I’ll be right there,” he said and the man nodded once before turning away and leaving. “I hate having to be the one to do it,” he told us.

“Comes with the job,” I said, knowing the feeling. “I’ve done it twice for our group.”

“Was the second time easier?”

“Not at all.”

* * *

I hated to tell Daryl no, and I hated to be as stubborn and firm as I had to be about it. He’d wanted and insisted thoroughly for me to drive back to the village with all the 8 children and 5 elders that we managed to load into the truck – they were all cramped on the front seat and in the bed of the truck. There was space for only one of us to drive back to the Village and he’s wanted me to do it because of my leg.

So as Sasha took the driver’s seat and headed away from the field, Daryl was pissed and took a guarding position away from me, still in sight but a little behind me as I walked ahead of everyone with Paul by my side. We put those who couldn’t fight in the middle and all the capable ones among them on the edges of the group, and circled them all with ourselves, the only ones we could really trust to know what we were doing.

The group was quiet, the rustling feet on the asphalt all that could be heard now.

“So, uh…” Paul started after a few minutes. “Which one is yours?”

I didn’t understand it immediately and looked at Paul in question. He raised his eyebrows, head jerking back towards were Daryl and Merle walked near each other, weapons in hand.

I looked at Daryl over my shoulder and then back at him, “Daryl,” I informed.

“I still didn’t get everyone’s names.”

“Oh, angel-wings-crossbow,” I explained.

“Ooh, right...” he said and then playfully and minutely punched the air saying, “Crap.”

I laughed, “What?”

“Well, it’s just…” he stumbled a little with the words, smiling shyly. “It’s just not that common these days to find, you know… _All that_.”

Ooh, okay. I got it. The guy was not blind at all.

I laughed, “Sorry, dude. The man’s taken.”

He chucked with me. I was liking this guy more as the hours passed and I hoped he’d become a friend to the Village, maybe a personal one too. But first and foremost, to the Village. It was important to understand what we could get out of this all. Because even though we knew we had caused their eviction from their town, we hadn’t done it on purpose, it’d been accidental, and we didn’t really _have to_ be putting out asses out there to rescue them. Even though we knew we could do it, even though we would make serious plan to get it done, it was dangerous. It was always dangerous out there.

We made it back safely, though, a procession of people crossing the Village’s gate under the curious eyes of everyone inside. A herd of children came running to the waiting arms of parents among the group, and their spirits lifted visibly at that, the tension starting to slowly melt away as the gate closed behind our backs.

Most were not comfortable when we made them hand out all of their guns and knives. As I’d told Paul before, the only people carrying any sort of weapons should be the people from the Village, and that included him and Jerry. They did hand it all, though, and we stored them all inside the locked doors of the storage house.

In the hours we stayed away, things had been organized to receive our guests. There was a fire going on near the lake, big pans boiling somethings, smelling incredible, and a grill balanced over rocks, morsels of deer being cooked. The fire was centering tables and chairs taken from many of our houses. Blankets and pillows were on the ground, which I could see had been cleaned from dirt and leaves. One table held enough plates, bowls cups and cutlery for all, and jugs of water that attracted most people immediately.

I saw tears in some people’s eyes, even though many were still wary, looking around as if expecting a herd to surprise them again, kill more of their people. They’d gone through it twice in such a short time, and I was glad, even if I didn’t really know any of them, that our group was being able to give them that. It felt good.

We didn’t have to communicate, we all just gathered a bit away from the group. The sun had gone down and the light of the fire was creating a comfy, campsite mood, people sitting and making themselves comfortable to rest. I was with Daryl, Merle, Michonne, Andrea and Carol nearly at the street, away from them, to discuss things that happened and what were the plans.

“It’s what we could do, there wasn’t much time,” Carol was explaining. She had been the one to oversee all this preparation. Andrea had also stayed behind and they’d worked together with the other women.

“It’s great, I don’t think I coulda done better,” I told her. “Where they all sleeping?”

“Third Street,” she answered. “Five houses there, we thought it’d be better if they were all concentrated in just one area.”

“Yes, good. They’re all gonna fit?”

“Cramped, but yes,” Andrea answered. “I don’t think they’ll complain, though.”

“Yeah, I think they won’t,” I agreed, taking a look at the camp again.

“Do we know how long they’ll be here?” Daryl asked with his arms crossed by my side.

“Well, as long as it takes to clear Woodbury,” Michonne answered with a shrug.

“With’em all being safe in here we got time, don’t have to rush into anything,” I told them. “I’m thinking a week or so if we start tomorrow.”

“Gotta put’em to do some work while they’re here, then,” Daryl said. ”Earn their stay, feel useful.”

I was nodding, “Haven’t thought of that. You’re right, gotta give’em jobs,” I said. “We can talk ‘bout it again tomorrow, we’ll have to make plans for the clear up anyway, so we’ll discuss it with Paul.”

“I’ll have the area around Third Street guarded,” Merle said. “Just in case. We still don’t know these people.”

“You planned on a schedule yet?”

He had and let us know who was on guard on which shift tonight.

“Why you both?” I asked when he said he and Daryl were scheduled for tonight. “You just got back from huntin’ this morning, slept out there last night and did all the rescuing today,” I looked at each of them, “You gotta be worn out.”

“If ya can wear yaself out with that wound,” Daryl said as he uncrossed his arms and started to back away from the circle. His tone was still annoyed and he barely looked at me as he spoke, “I think we can handle workin’ a bit tired.”

* * *

He had disappeared sometime midway through dinner. He didn’t eat with me, preferring to sit with his brother and other men, making me sit with Mich, Andrea, and Carol. Dinner was amazing, there was white rice, bone broth and options of grilled deer and stew. But as good as all the food and mood was, I was deeply bothered by how Daryl was acting. I didn’t think he had enough reasons to be all distant with me all day after we left that field with the Woodbury people. I needed to find him and talk about it, so I got Carol, Jerry and Paul together and told them Carol would be the Village representative taking care of the group. She accepted to do it gladly and I took my leave.

Daryl was sitting on the porch steps when I got home, walking alone along the empty Circle Street, the warm, orange glow of the fire and the murmur of people’s voices fading away in the distance. He had a cigarette lit and looked at me when I walked towards him, but quickly averted his eyes down again. I stopped in front of him on the pathway before the first step, arms crossed.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“’S nothing,” he said quietly, his voice grave.

“That ain’t nothin’,” I was getting really worried. “Daryl?”

“Forget it,” he said as he dropped the butt of his cigarette on the step and crushed with his heel.

“I ain’t forgetting it, you’ve never acted like that before with me. What’s happening?”

He finally looked at me then, and spoke. His voice was really annoyed, a bit risen but not yelling, “Guess it just came to me that no matter what I say to you, no matter what I think, ya gonna always act the way _you_ want not givin’ a shit for what I think. You’re the boss, the leader of this group and since I’m in it, makes ya _my boss_ too. So I can tell ya whatever I think but you’ll end up doing shit the way you want anyway.”

I was taken aback wordless. I knew it was something to do with me walking back to the Village, but honestly, I hadn’t thought it was such a big deal. I had fought walkers at the prison with the wound. I had fought walkers today at the field with the wound! How was as simple walk back home worse than it all?

“This don’t make sense, Daryl,” I started. “Didn’t I just agree with you when ya said we’d have to put these people to work? I hadn’t even thought of that, and now it’s something we’ll get done ‘cause you said it. And that’s just one example! How can you say I don’t listen to you?”

“Ain’t that kinda shit I’m talking about!” he rebated, elbows on his knees, open hands. “It’s when it’s ‘bout _you_! I try to take care of ya but ya don’t listen, too damn stubborn. Shouldn’t even have gone there today, shoulda left it to the rest of us. Miranda said it, Hershel said it, you need to take it easy on that leg! You got fuckin’ shot, for fuck’s sakes, d’ya forget ‘bout it?”

I had my mouth hanging open, no knowing what to say. I was angry at all the scolding but couldn’t find anything to say that would tell him he was wrong.

He moved on, “Ya go out there, fight walkers, walk miles back home side by side with ya new little friend.”

_Wait, what?_

“What’s Paul got to do with any of it?”

“Ya putting strain on ya wounds ‘cause of him and his people. I can still see the bruises in your face, Sam! And then ya there walking with him and all giggling –”

He stopped suddenly, because he caught himself on what he said. I caught him too. And no. No, no, no, he could not mean that. No way.

“Fuck do you mean by that?” I asked in a low voice, trying to contain myself. I didn’t want to be fighting with Daryl, it was the last thing I wanted right now, but he could not mean that.

“Forget it.”

He was jealous. He was motherfucking jealous and this is what annoyed me the most. How could he think I’d ever give him any reason to be jealous of me? So after a pause in which I took a deep, controlling breath, I told him slowly and clearly, “Paul is gay, Daryl. He’s more interested in you than in me. And even if he wasn’t, even if he was straight and if he wanted me, do you really think I’d do that?” his only answer was a shake of his head with a scoff, still angry but wordless. “I can’t believe you don’t trust me. After all we gone thru, how can you not trust me?”

He said nothing, just looked down at the step between his legs and shook his head once again. I said nothing either because now I was hurt. Had nothing we lived together and apart been enough for him to get it? Had I not been clear enough when I told him I loved him and that this was forever? Where had I gone wrong to make him think I’d go from him to the next guy as if the past months, nearly a year, had meant nothing?

After a moment he got up and walked down the steps, rounding me and heading straight away from the house, to the street. And I thought I couldn’t get any more baffled, but he proved me wrong. Was he just walking away from the fight, just like that?

“Where ya going?” I asked and my voice was so transparent I knew he could hear it trembling in anger in its shriek pitch.

“I got round duty,” he explained already stepping onto the street. “Back in three hours.”

* * *

This wasn’t over. I’d not let this fight extend any more than it should. When he left, I’d gone inside, taken a quick shower and headed to bed. I laid there alone trying to get some sleep after setting the little alarm clock to wake me up in three hours. I took a long time to sleep though, thinking too had of things. Even though I was angry at him for being jealous, I forced myself to think of the others things he’d said before that, about me not listening to him when he tried to take care of me, about how I should let the others do things in my place because I needed to take care of myself.

That was so goddamn hard for me… It had always been. My whole fucking life, it wasn’t just now. And If I was on a therapist’s couch right now, I knew exactly what they’d tell me. All the origins of it, of this necessity to be in control, to be there at the front of it all, to have such a hard time letting it go. I knew all the reasons.

I got up after what felt like five minutes of sleep when the alarm went off, slid on some old women’s slippers on my feet, wrapped the throw blanket from the couch around my shoulders, and sat there, waiting for him to come home.

He didn’t take long to open the door silently and slide in, expecting to find me asleep. His eyes fell on me on the couch, my back to the armrest, obviously waiting for him. He hesitated for a moment, a hand on the door handle. He closed it quietly as he anxiously started chewing on his inner lower lip. Turning away from me, he removed all his weapons from holsters and waistband, still saying nothing. I don’t know what I was expecting, but seeing walk into the house without looking again at me was not it. He went straight into the bathroom, closed the door, and, seconds later, I heard the shower running. He took less than five minutes to go out, a towel wrapped around his waist and entered the bedroom to get dressed.

His hair was dripping a little when he came out back into the living room, wearing grey sweatpants that hang low on his hips and a white sleeveless t-shirt, barefoot. He looked goddamn eatable, but I couldn’t think of it now. Silent, he came to the couch and sat facing me, but with his eyes low.

“I’m sorry…” he breathed out in a whisper. I said nothing, knowing there was more he had to say. These things were not easy for him. He was trying to find the words even though he’d probably be thinking of them for hours now. “It ain’t that I don’ trust you. I do,” he looked up at my eyes, “I trust ya with my life. Know ya’d never do anything like that…” and he looked down again, one hand coming up to fiddle with a loose thread on the blanket over my knee. “I guess I just keep waiting for the moment ya gonna come to ya senses. Find someone better ‘cause it ain’t that hard to find someone better than me. Ain’t ‘bout you… ‘S just… I’m fucked up. Ya know I’m kinda fucked up in the head.”

“I know,” I told him. “Thought ‘bout it after ya left… And I calmed down. I know ya don’t think I’d just turn on ya and find the next guy. You know that, right?”

He looked at me again, “I know.”

“Good. Ya keep that in mind,” I said as softly as I could as I removed a hand from under the blanket and covered his on my knee, holding it firmly. “One day I hope I’ll be able to make ya see yourself the way I see you. I’ll keep workin’ on making you believe how much I love you. How good you are for me, how more than enough you are, how I think you’re more than what I deserved to find in a man,” and I saw his eyes had also softened and his cheeks were pinking a little. “If I can make ya see thru my eyes, you’ll see the most reliable man I know, the most dependable and dedicated man. You’ll see the love of my life and then maybe you’ll believe you deserve it all. I ain’t givin’up on that.”

He nodded firmly, looking down again as he bit on his lip. He was trying right now to believe it all. To not come up with reasons to prove me wrong, and I knew he’d try to. He would try to overcome all the times he’d heard the opposite throughout his life, make my voice and my actions and gestures speak louder in his mind.

“Okay?” I asked with a squeeze in his hand.

He looked up again and gave me a whispered “Okay,” and asked, “Ya forgive me?”

I smiled tenderly, my hand leaving his to find his cheek, “Of course.”

He leaned in to find my lips, one arm enveloping my entire body, and we kissed softly for a moment. But the conversation was not over yet. With this part out of the way, there were things I wanted to say too, so I stopped the kiss before either of us could try to deepen it, and looked straight at him, our bodies closer now than before.

“I don’t wanna be your leader,” I started and saw his eyebrows come down slightly in confusion. “I don’t wanna be your _boss_. You don’t need me to be, I don’t wanna be. I wanna be by your side, not ahead of you.” I moved a little, getting more comfortable, sitting with my legs crossed on the couch and reaching for both his hands. “It’s damn hard for me doing that. I don’t know how. I didn’t rely on anyone my whole life. I trusted very few people, I can count them… It was my dad, but he was so…” and I smiled sadly at his memory, “so placid and so pure in his heart that I always avoided needing him or I’d break his heart with… Things I done. And then there was Michonne during those two years we were friends, I could trust her. The girl had my back… But then she left. There was no one else I could count on. I got used to that, it was my normal. I took care of me, I had to have control,” and I paused to think about it a little, and scoffed. “Not that it worked out well. Failed miserably in that because I lost control over my life many times, but I still held on to my ‘ _don’t trust anyone’_ rule. Then there was you at the beginning of it all, and just when I was getting used to having someone walking by my side, I lost you. So… It’s hard. A shrink you have a blast with my brain, really. But I’m working on it, I promise I am.”

“You know you can trust me to have your back”, Daryl asked me, “in all ya need. Ya know that, right?”

“I know. I know and I trust it will all my heart. My problem’s more about letting others take care of things or even of me. My fucked up head keeps thinkin’ I gotta be the one to deal with stuff or they won’t work the way I want, even though I know it ain’t true. It’s a mommy issue, I’m sure o’that. Someone I shoulda been able to trust deeply did what she done. Ya not the only fucked up in the head here, Daryl,” I said with a smile, making him breathe out a laugh, shaking his head. “But I think I’m doing better? I put others in charge o’things and let’em decide stuff. Ain’t easy, sometimes I still wanna do it all myself, but… It’s progress, ain’t it?”

“It is,” he answered. “But ya gotta lemme take care of you too. Ain’t just the Village. I asked ya once if ya’d lemme take care of you. Back at the farm when we started, and ya said ya’d let me.”

“I did. I said I’d let ya take care of me and Jack. I trusted you with my child, it’s how much I trust you. And that’s why I don’ wanna be your leader. I want ya as my partner. I want ya ahead of this place with me, by my side. Not among the others. I want ya to lead with me.”

He furrowed his eyebrows deeply now, thoughtful for a moment, considering my words. With all we’d been talking about, I’m sure this was not what he expected me to say at all.

“You want me to be leader with you?” he repeated and I nodded firmly in confirmation, my eyes firmly on his so he’d know I was sure of what I was saying. “I ain’t a leader, Sam… Don’t know how to do that.”

“I didn’t know how to do that either. I was an addict waitress, adult high school student before all that. I had no idea what I was doin’, never thought I’d be the head of anything, but I think I’m turning out well. If I can do it, Daryl, you can do it. We can do it together,” and as he said nothing, nervously chewing on his lip, I moved on, “I want ya more than as my boyfriend. You’re my _partner_ , and one day I want to call you my _husband_ , but even then you’ll always be my partner.”

His eyes were shining more than normal as he looked straight into mine, listening to the truth in my words. I had used the _husband_ word and I hadn’t planned on that, but it felt right to say.

“What do you say?” I asked him after a long moment of silence.

He was nodding even as I asked, “If ya think I can do it.”

“I’m sure you can.”

“Then you got it,” he told me firmly, making a smile instantly bloom in my face. “But you gotta listen to me, especially when it’s about takin’ care of you.”

“I promise I’ll listen. But you gotta know I ain’t always gonna agree with you, and that we’ll argue about things, just like you won’t agree with all I say. Like if ya tell me not to go with ya’ll to clear Woodbury,” I said shaking my head already in answer to his hypothetical request. “But all we gotta do is listen to each other and talk about stuff. We’ll find the best way out of any argument.”

He was nodding, “Okay. We’ll learn as we go, partner.”


	56. Day 321

Daryl was definitely not into public displays of affection, so as I dozed off with my head on his shoulder and my arms wrapped around his left one, he sat a bit stiffly and quiet, but did not make me let go. It was way too damn early, the sun was not even up yet, and I regretted deeply having scheduled a meeting this early. What the hell was I thinking? Even Honey was yawning where she laid on our feet in Michonne’s living room.

Daryl and I had barely slept last night. _Obviously_. After all the discussion and important conversation last night, we had sealed it all with a lot of sex. A _lot_ , I mean it.

“You drooling,” Daryl’s deep voice brought me back, making me straighten up, close my mouth that had been hanging open, and bring a hand to dry the corner of my lips. By my side, he chuckled. “Let’s get ya some coffee,” he completed as he got up, motioning me to do so too, but I slumped back onto the couch, closing my eyes again.

“No, lemme sleep... Just ‘til everyone gets here,” I whined as I crossed my arms, trying to get comfortable in my sitting position, but the door was opened as Paul arrived, stopping under the threshold looking around as if questioning he was in the right place.

“There, that’s everyone,” Daryl said and extended a hand to me. “C’mon, up.”

I groaned and accepted it, allowing him to pull me up. I was not the only one sleepy, it’s just that other people had always dealt with sleepiness better than I did.

“You’ve got to stop keeping the girl awake all night, Daryl,” Carol said from the other side of the kitchen counter as we approached after stepping over Honey as she slept soundly, and I slumped down on a stool.

“Stop,” he said, his ears turning red as he looked at anywhere but either of us.

I laughed lazily, “Yeah, no, I don’t second that!”

“Hmm, seems like it’s worth it then,” Carol said as she pretended to hide a smile behind her coffee mug and wiggled her eyebrows.

“I’m out,” he said as he turned away with his coffee in hand and stood a bit apart from us, but as our eyes met again across the counter, he was smirking.

“Coffee, Jesus?” Michonne called him as she joined Carol and I by the counter and reached to grab her own.

“Uh, yeah, please,” he said a little bashfully as he approached too. He’d still been standing by the door, unsure of what to do.

As he joined us, others did too, Merle grabbing some of the leftover meat from last night’s dinner, which Mich had warmed up for us all as breakfast, with his hand. I swallowed a big, heavenly hot strong coffee and sighed in pleasure. Now the day could start.

“Where d’you sleep, Paul?” I asked him.

I hadn’t had the chance to see where each person from our guests’ group had been accommodated in. They were all sharing the houses on Third Street, not far from my home.

“On Carol’s couch, actually,” he said with a nod in her direction. “The others are well accommodated, but it was either find someone else’s couch to crash or share a tiny one with Jerry, so it was no brainer.”

“I don’t know, sleeping next to Jerry could be cozy,” Andrea offered as she swirled her own hot coffee around on her cup, and she made a sweet face, with a pout, “like snuggling with a pillow!”

Paul had the same expression when he said, “And he has the sweetest eyes!”

I laughed but groaned at the same time, “Shit, you guys are way too cheery this early in the morning…”

“Why did it have to be _this_ early?” Michonne complained.

“’Cause of stuff,” I said lamely before taking another large gulp of coffee.

“That’s eloquent,” Michonne said with a smile.

“The articulation every leader must have!” Andrea completed her.

I was smiling when I told them “Fuck you,” and caught Paul looking at us looking a bit baffled, eyebrows up. I didn’t blame him. The leader he previously had was been the Governor, and I did not think for a moment he was actually friends with the WB people. He’d have to get used to this because this was how things worked at the Village.

I was a better leader than the sonofabitch had been. _Suck it, motherfucker_.

“C’mon, use your words,” Daryl said from somewhere behind me and he reached over my shoulder to grab some breakfast from the counter.

“Woodbury, people, herd,” I used my words. “Ya’ll know what I mean. We got so much to do today, can’t waste time. We gotta make plans, this time we can do that, no rush like before.”

“Yeah, but just like before,” Michonne said as she leaned against the counter across from me, “we don’t know how big the herd is. We got rid of part of it before it got to Woodbury but it could’ve attracted more and be even larger now.”

“It’s what I mean, that part’s the same, but’s different now ‘cause now we got time,” I said. “If it’s smaller, great. If it’s bigger we’ll be prepared, but it ain’t no joke either way.”

“But we’re gonna do as you did to lead them away from the prison, right?” Paul asked. “Just drive them away? Attract them with noise?”

I saw most of the heads around shaking, thinking the same I was.

“Basically, yes,” Andrea said.

“But only, you know, the main idea,” I told him. “But that? Man, that was reckless, somethin’ that had to be done ‘cause we had no other choice.”

“Whole lotta things coulda gone wrong that night,” Daryl completed.

“If that car had stopped working,” Michonne said shaking her head, “Morales would have gotten trapped in the middle of the herd, alone, and we wouldn’t even know about it.”

“If he’d found people on the way, if there was another herd ahead, if he hit a dead end…” I pointed out. “It was too fuckin’ risky.”

“Just as risky as us all jumpin’ in the middle of the fuckin’ herd to kill’em with our hands,” Merle completed in agreement.

“Somethin’ else we gotta think about,” Daryl said from near my shoulder and I turned a little to see him sideways, “we led it straight to another community then, could easily do that again this time. Gotta think how to make sure it won’t find another group again and fuck’em up.”

“Only way to make sure of it is kill’em all,” I said with a frown, trying to think of an answer even before I asked it, “How’re we supposed to do that?” and I looked around at the others, “Can’t stab or shoot each one of, what, two hundred walkers?”

“With fire,” Daryl said simply and everyone looked at him in question. He took a moment to answer, thinking about it, a bit irked by having everyone looking at and listening to him. Daryl wasn’t used to that. “That night at the farm,” he started with a pointed look at me, and then at Andrea. “You remember the barn? The fire?”

“There was a fire in the barn?” I asked him. “I didn’t see it. How did I not see it?”

“You were pro’ly too busy _not dying_ ,” Merle answered from where he sat on top of the sink counter, around a mouthful of meat.

“Point is, the fire started and then they were all walking straight to it when we left,” Daryl told us. “The light and noise called them in.”

“I couldn’t see the barn when I got back there the next morning,” I said looking at nothing, remembering those awful moments, “but the walkers were all around the farm. Maybe the remaining ones spread again when the fire was over.”

“See, I have no idea what you’re talking about?” Jesus said, “But it seems like a hell of a story.”

Both Daryl and I just made a _pfff._ This was not the time to tell it all.

“So ya figure jus’ put them all inside someth’ and burn the fuck out of it?” Merle asked Daryl.

Daryl just nodded in answer.

“Well, if we’re going with the fire idea, let’s go with the barn too,” I said and turned on the stool to look at Paul, “Any barn, warehouse, shed or whatever near Woodbury we can use?”

He looked afar in thought for a couple of seconds before nodding, a hopeful look surging on his face, “As a matter of fact I do.”

* * *

The first part of the plan had been defined as we left Michonne’s, the sun only now up. Daryl, Carol, and I walked with Paul towards Third Street, the temporary home of the WB’s, as the others got the car and weapons ready for us to go out. Once we got the whole group together, Paul told them briefly all our plans and what they all could expect. When we left, leaving Carol there with them to coordinate their accommodation and activities, they had all been informed that they’d have to find jobs within the Village: helping with the construction of the wall, doing laundry, street cleaning, a community cookout, these sort of things. Many of them decided right then what they wanted to do, and Paul told them that as he was out with us, Jerry and Carol would oversee them all.

Before leaving, I set some boundaries for the children – I could see how inpatient they were with all the talking, eager to just get away and play in the whole safety of the Village – pointing out that they were not to play too near the pond because we didn’t even know how deep it was, there could even be dormant walkers down there.

That was the first I thought of this possibility, we’d have to find a way to check in sometime soon.

Also, they were not to play in the northeast corner of the Village, because it was our cemetery, so have some respect, and finally, not to play too much with Honey, because she was a very good girl but she was big and strong, and if she sometimes could knock even me down, I could imagine what she could unintentionally do to a child. She was a great dog, but she could be really clumsy when excited. Although being clumsy when excited was one of the things I liked most about her.

There was a feeling of proudness in the car when we left the Village and took the road. Like we all knew we were doing something good, and even though we had yet to talk to Paul about the future of our communities, I knew I was not the only one who knew all the good things that could come from this relationship. This could be the start of something big for all of us.

Just as big as this day was starting to be. As we drove along the road, not so fast as to avoid any stray walkers on the road, not so slow as not to waste any time, Daryl passed with the pickup truck right in front of a fenced, empty field, where we all could see clearly, parked a few yards in, a huge flatbed truck, one army box truck and two army transport trucks, one of them equipped with a huge ass, movie-like machine gun perched on it. To complete the scene, boxes and boxes of supplies were visible inside the opened box truck and on the ground among the cars, and the obvious forms of something like five or six military walkers absently walking around, their mission, whatever it was, obviously failed.

He stopped the car on the side of the road past the field, just out of sight if someone was alive there, and we all hopped off. In silence, we stalked closer and stopped, all crouched down, to observe. There were no signs of anyone there being alive, but the tall grass could hide anything. We approached slowly, first hidden by the side trees, always stopping to observe, the silence among us and all around only broken by the wind on the trees’ leaves and the grass. After a few minutes I felt more certain there were no living people there and nodded my head to the others from where we were all crouching. At that, Daryl got up on his feet, brought two fingers to his mouth and whistled twice, loudly. We all watched as the six walkers slowly turned their heads in our direction and started stumbling on their feet, but it confirmed it was really just them. Daryl and I had time to shoot and reload out crossbows thrice each before they could get anywhere near us.

“Holy. Damn,” I stated minutes later after we swept all the perimeter, finding no immediate danger, as I took a look at our findings. The trucks were filled with supplies, dried food, first-aid kits and tools, medication, water, battery-operated long-distance radios, ammo, weapons, a box with five fucking grenades, for fuck’s sakes, and gallons and gallons of fuel.

“Fuckin’ jackpot,” Daryl was saying as he passed by me, moving from one truck to the others.

“What the hell happened here?” Glenn asked as he looked at the bodies on the ground.

More than the walkers we’d found standing there, we’d been surprised to find the really dead bodies of other seven soldiers, all with bullets through their heads. By the flies loudly buzzing, the worms on the bodies and the putrid, unbreathable air around them, they’d been dead for a long while.

“Why didn’t whoever killed’em take all these things?” Michonne completed Glenn’s question.

“’Cause o’ that!” Merle said aloud for us all to hear. He was a few yards away from us, towards the entrance of the area by the road. Daryl walked fast in his brother’s direction to go see what he meant, as Merle kept telling “There motherfuckers over here.”

He’d found even more bodies hidden by the tall grass. Observing the scene around, Daryl and Merle proceeded to make conclusions about what had happened, like two experienced detectives would. They said that this group of heavily armed civilians had attacked the soldiers, but most of them, on both sides, had been killed by the other side almost immediately. The last survivors kept on trying to kill the other until they all died.

“Seriously?” Maggie asked, unsure if she believed it all.

“No!” Merle said and laughed out loud as Daryl shook his head with a side smirk, controlling a laugh in as he walked away from his brother back to where we were by the cars. “Made that up!”

I laughed, shaking my head and saying “Assholes,” and I saw a few eyes rolling and some amused smiles all around.

“Nah, was pro’ly the Governor before it all happened,” Daryl explained. “Was a while ago. There tire tracks leadin’ away,” he said pointing to the road, “Some of’em died but some others took a car, pro’ly a loaded truck.”

“Migh’ve been planning to come back later to grab the rest,” Merle said as he sat on the open door of the back of one of the trucks. “But then _we_ pro’ly happened to them and changed the plans. I may even know some o’ them but can’t see them faces no more.”

“Then I guess we’ll find whatever they did take stored at Woodbury,” Maggie said.

“It’s a good thing they didn’t take it all before they found the Village,” Paul said from where he stood on the bed of the other truck, “He’d have massacred you.”

And damn, he was right. The thing he was eyeing now would surely have whipped off the Village. It was a huge ass, heavy fucking war machine gun, with a chain full of bullets as big as my hand hanging and swirling around inside a wooden crate under it.

“Can’t leave this out here now we found it,” I said, looking around. “We gonna have to go back to the Village.”

“It’s gonna get too late to go to the warehouse,” Michonne alerted, shaking her head.

“No, you’re right, we gotta go,” I said thoughtfully.

“Let’s split up,” Daryl said. “We can put all the things in these two trucks and two people drive’em back home.”

“Can you two go?” I asked as I looked from Glenn to Maggie. Both nodded immediately without needing to look at each other to agree. “We ain’t too far, I don’t think there’ll be any danger on the road. Just drive steady and fast straight home and ya gonna be fine.”

We worked fast on gathering everything that was all around - and that included armors the dead soldiers wore, items from their pockets, all their guns and knives – and accommodating them on the trucks with the boxes that were already in them. Obviously one of the trucks we were taking was the one that housed the machine gun. I only remembered I forgot to ask if Glenn and Maggie knew how to drive heavy trucks when they were already driving away from the rest of us slowly towards the road. And I sighed, worried.

But they’d be fine, I knew they’d be fine. They were fighters too.

* * *

The warehouse was actually smaller than we expected, but still a good size. It was enclosed in an empty, large patio surrounded by a chain-link fence much like the one at the prison, a simple gate closed with a latch but unlocked. Daryl stopped the truck facing it and we observed for a moment. Few walkers were around, outside the fence, and came stumbling to the car. I opened the door by my side on the passenger seat just as Merle and Mich did the same in the back seat, quickly followed out by Paul who’d been sitting between them. Only Daryl stayed in the car as I walked over to the gate to open it, while the others had their weapons ready. When I turned back again after pushing it open, all the walkers were gone. We all walked into the patio carefully, looking around with our guns and crossbow ready. Daryl followed us in with the car, slowly and silent. Paul stayed back to close and latch the gate after the truck was in, and we all gathered again after swiping the front of the building. Daryl had his crossbow ready as soon as he slid out of the driver’s seat.

The front, huge grey metal sliding door, was tightly secured locked with a chain that had been padlocked from the inside. The chain was sturdy and it would take a huge, specialized tool to break it. The fact that it had been secured from the inside did not escape our attention, all of our five pairs of eyes meeting and heads nodding in agreement.

Someone could be inside.

I made a round gesture with a finger, signalizing we had to go around it. I pointed at Merle and Michonne and then to the right side of the building. They nodded as I looked at Daryl and Paul and gestured with my head to the opposite side. Still in complete silence, we split up.

The left side of the warehouse had nearly the entire sidewall lined with huge piles empty pallets. These could be useful, there was a lot we could do with all the wood. It’d be a shame to burn it all down. My mind was already rushing into what we’d do with it all before leading the herd there, just as well as what we’d do it there was still stuff stored inside the warehouse. The last huge pile was tipped over and a walker was trapped under it, the lower side of its torso crushed under the weight. It groaned and extended its hands as we approached, but Daryl and I ignored it. The sounds it was making came to an abrupt stop after we passed, nearly reaching the back of the building, as Paul stabbed it in the brain.

The back patio was larger than the front, and there were an abandoned box truck and a forklift with a real tall mast there. On the back of the building, a small set of stairs lead to a closed-door with a wired glass panel, and it seemed to be the only way in other than the windows above. There were four of them, high in the back wall, all closed except for the farthest, where it seemed to be offices or restrooms on the upper floor of the warehouse.

Michonne climbed the stairs and approached the door, het katana secured on her back, a revolver ready in hand, and tested the handle. It was locked and the door didn’t even shake. She looked at me shaking her head and I gestured her to come back down and join us.

“I don’ wanna damage them doors, this one or the front,” I told them in a low voice. “Gotta find a way in and open the front door from the inside.”

“But there’s just the windows,” Paul opined, “and they’re pretty high,” and at that, as one, Michonne, Daryl, and Merle looked pointedly from Paul to myself, and I was already smiling. “What?”

Not answering, I looked up, taking a few steps back and looking at the windows again, all calculations happening in my head. Paul was right, the only open window was not normally reachable and the metallic wall of the warehouse was not climbable.

“The forklift?” I heard Merle ask.

“Yeah!” I said, loving the idea. “I can do it.”

“Let’s pull it closer,” Merle said to all but no one specifically.

“Sure ya good to do it?” Daryl asked as Merle and Paul walked over to the forklift. “Gonna get them stitches open again.”

“Miranda assured me these are stronger than the ones that broke,” I told him. “And this will take more arm than leg, and the shoulder’s strong again,” and I smiled, trying to reassure him, reaching for his hand, “Don’t worry, I can do it.”

“If someone’s inside… Don’t want ya going in there alone,” he said in a grave and low voice, for my ears only.

“I’d rather not too, but none of you can reach it as I can,” and I shook his hand that I was holding with a big smile, “C’mon, lemme use my skills!”

The forklift was a damn heavy thing, and as it wouldn’t start, we had to muscle push it towards the building, maneuvering it so its mast would be as close as possible from the wall. There was still a gap between it and the window, though, but I’d only know how difficult it’d be once I climbed it. So I removed the crossbow from my back, handing it to Daryl – the weight could drag me down – and I hopped over it, quickly pushing myself up to the roof of the vehicle.

As I held the mast with both hands and tried to focus on the task, I heard Michonne whisper from the ground, “Oh, please be careful,” but I said nothing. One booted foot testing the grip on the mast, I jumped up, the other food following it, and I held myself up against the mast. Feeling thankful I’d been wearing gloves, I started climbing up, feeling the whole forklift swaying a little with my motion, first my arms reaching up, then legs following it, again and again until I reached the top of it. My arms and abdomen muscles burned a bit with the effort – I’d been trying to keep exercising to keep strong but there was too much happening these days, I couldn’t do it as much as I wished. But either way, burning muscles or not, I was able to reach the top and align myself with the open window. I couldn’t see anything, it was dark in there, but I’d see it in a minute.

I brought myself carefully to the other side of the mast, getting in position between it and the window, and took a moment to concentrate. I looked down at my four companions, all looking up at me, Michonne with a hand covering her lips and Paul with his mouth hanging open, impressed. I looked away before I could pay attention to Daryl, though, because I knew I’d see the worry in his face and I couldn’t think of it now. I closed my eyes for a moment, a deep breath in and strongly out, puffing my cheeks, and then I fixed my eyes on the window, all the calculations happening in my head again.

I had only one shot at this.

My arms let go of the mast first, readily reaching for the window as I pushed my feet and legs against the mast, propping me away from it, my whole body turning around itself to face the wall. My fingertips grabbed the windowsill, the toes of my boots on the metal wall under it, and I stopped where I was, holding myself up there with all the muscles of my body tensed.

There was silence as my heart pounded and my muscles burned, and then I heard a _whoop_ from down there, probably Paul excitedly impressed by the jump, but I had no time to think if it. Right above my head, inside the room, the hungry snarl of a walker broke the silence as it woke up from a dormant state. I saw its head appearing through the window, hungrily lowering to my arm, dangerously close.

“Fuck!” I groaned, removing my right arm from the sill, all my weight only on my left arm.

“Sam!” Michonne yelled from down there, scared.

The walker quickly changed directions and went for my other arm, making me grab the windowsill again with my right hand so I’d remove the left one. The motherfucker corpse made me do a little dance, changing hands in quick succession at least three times before I saw a chance to do something about it. My boots were starting to slide down on the wall and I’d fall or get bit if I waited one more second.

So I reached up, my whole body moving up with my arm, and grabbed its putrid neck, and groaned aloud as I pulled it out as strongly as I could, my muscles starting to shake. The walker was roaring and fighting, but I managed to get a very good grip on the rotting neck. With a final pull, it slid out of the window and let go, throwing it down to the patio. They’d deal with it down there and, sure enough, when I grabbed the sill again with both hands, breathing hard, it's loud complaints were silenced.

“I’m okay!” I breathed aloud from there, knowing how scared they must have been watching the scene. Forcing myself even more, I pulled myself up on my arms and twisted my body to sit on the sill, quickly throwing a leg in and finally, _finally_ , being able to relax my tired, shaking muscles. I rested my hands between my legs and tried to control my breathing, looking inside the room to find it now thankfully empty, and then down at the patio again. Daryl was pacing nervously, Paul had his hands on his head, Michonne was laughing resting her hands on her knees and Merle shook his head with a tense expression. I laughed, letting all the air come out of my lungs.

Shit, that was fucking dangerous!

Adrenaline running in my veins, I threw my other leg in and hopped down. My heart was still beating loudly in my ears as I looked around, recognizing I was in a sort of resting room for employees, a bunk bed against a wall with no mattresses, a couch and coffee table on the other, a small refrigerator, a few empty shelves on the walls and the open door for a small bathroom. Opposite the window, the door was closed.

I turned back to the window and put my head outside to look down at my friends. As they saw me, I gave them a thumbs up showing things were fine in there. A moment before I returned into the room, I saw them all talking and moving already, deciding what to do while I was in there. I didn’t have to worry about it, I trusted they’d do all the right things.

Focusing on my surroundings, I took my two guns from my shoulder holster and cocked them before resting my ear on the door, trying to listen to anything outside. It was dead silent. I faced the door again and reached for the handle, turning it as quietly as possible while still holding the gun. I pulled the door opened inwards and hid against the wall, looking outside at a corridor for a moment before carefully stepping out. This corridor and all the doors on it were in a mezzanine overseeing the open space of the warehouse bellow. It would be all dark if it wasn’t for the few translucent tiles on the high ceiling, allowing me to see the space down there. There were big sets of shelves, the space between them was large, and I could see most of them were empty, but there were still some boxes and crates and full pallets.

Slowly, I walked to my right along the corridor until I got to the next door. It was slightly opened and I shoved it in carefully. This was an office, thankfully empty, and I just entered it long enough to make sure of it and to notice there was still a lot of stuff in there. We’d have to come back in there later to scavenge for useful stuff.

The next door gave me a stop. It seemed lived in, the two mattresses from that empty bunkbed placed together on the floor, complete with sheets and pillows and a few pieces of clothing around the floor.

Shit. If someone was living here… Many things went through my mind at once. We couldn’t fill the pace with walkers and burn it down if people lived here. And if people lived here, they could still be inside or arrive at any moment now, and I was in danger. I turned immediately back to the door pointing my guns at it, as if expecting some random person to be standing there, catching me in the invasion, but there was nobody. Doubling my carefulness and slowing down my steps even more, I returned to the corridor and moved on to the next and final door.

And I froze midstep, guns pointing in front of me, when the door was slowly pulled open from the inside. There, just by the threshold, a woman stood with a baseball bat in hand, holding it up and firmly, but it was slightly shaking in her hands. She said nothing just stared at me, and I did the same, not knowing what exactly to do now. But right behind her, hiding between her body and the wall, a child as peeking, trying to see me. The woman saw me eyeing the small girl and took a quick, short step to the side, effectively hiding her from my sight.

A woman and a child were no threat to me. Right now, I was a threat to them, even if I didn’t want to be. Breathing out real slowly, my barrels lowered a little already, but I had to quickly raise them again and the door as pulled further opened and someone else appeared there, her own gun pointing directly at me. This woman was not shaking like the one holding the bat. She held the gun expertly and comfortably like she knew what she was doing, and her face was firm and angry.

Looking over her shoulder into the room, I saw nobody else. It was probably just them, two women and a child, only one of them able to defend herself. She’d probably been protecting the other two all this time.

I lowered my guns with no second thought and I saw the look of surprise in her. The bat on the other one’s hands lowered a bit at that. I uncocked and holstered the pistols and raised my hands.

“Sorry,” I said. “Didn’t know there’d be people in here.”

“Who are you?” the woman with the bat, held much lower now, asked.

“My name’s Sam. I’m no threat, I promise. Please lower your gun.”

“You alone?” she asked, not lowering it at all.

“Yes. In here, yes.”

“What d’you mean, in here?”

“Four friends outside, waiting for me to open the doors for them,” I said, deciding to be honest with these women, hoping they’d trust me for it. “They’re no threat either, I can guarantee.”

The two women shared a quick look as if considering what to do next, and I took a chance to talk more to them.

“D’you live here?” I asked, “The other room seemed lived in.”

“Been here a couple of days,” the one with the gun and pretty, big dark eyes said. “Where the hell did _you_ come from?”

“We live somewhere nearby,” I said vaguely. “Did you see the community? A mile or two away from here, with all the walkers?”

“Walkers?” the one with the bat asked.

“The dead.”

“Yes, we saw them,” she told me, the bat nearly all the way down now. “We found the place before it got overrun. We were going to ask for shelter there,” she kept telling me and the other one looked at her, eyes expressively telling her to maybe stop talking or questioning why she was sharing. She kept on talking, though, “but it was late already and we decided to go back during the day, and took shelter in here. It was overrun by then, everyone was gone.”

I nodded, “That’s Woodbury. I know the people there. I know their leader. My people and I are here to help them.”

“How?” the gunned woman asked.

“We’re removing the walkers. Bringing them in here. Then we’ll burn them down,” I said and they shared a look again. The woman’s eyebrows lifted a little at it, not showing so much tension now. “Then the people can move back in there. You can too, they’ll take you in,” and there was a moment of silence again. “I’ll make sure they’ll take you in if you, please, lower your gun now.”

They shared another look and the one hiding the child nodded. The other looked at me again for another second before lowering it all the way, holstering it on her waistband.

“These are my sister and niece,” she said, still seriously but a little less tense now. “You see this here?” she said pointing at the gun she’d lowered. “This here is a fully loaded, standard-issue Smith ‘n Wesson. I’m Atlanta City Police and I have enough to kill you every day for the next weeks. You or your people mess with me or my family, I sweat to Christ, I will put you down. Got it?” she said and I caught myself nearly smiling.

 _Good for you, girl_. That’s what I’d expect people to act like right now. Good girl. I nodded firmly and certainly at her and said “Got it.”

“Then we’re cool,” she said and extended a closed fist at me, expecting me to pound it. “I’m Tara.”


	57. Day 322

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Guys, we're not far at all from the end of this story! :(

One of the pallets that were still loaded inside the warehouse had been filled with packs and packs pure blessings of the heavens. Paul told us that Woodbury didn’t have much storage space inside, so they just kept this warehouse safe and went back there anytime they needed a refill of anything it offered. That’s how he knew about the place. It was a goldmine, a true fucking goldmine, with powdered milk, flour, corn starch, sugar, salt, cornmeal, and brown rice. We’d loaded the truck from the back patio – and we were only capable of using the truck because Tara knew how to hotwire it, explaining with a shrug that _you catch up a few things in the academy_ – with all of it, and some extra empty pallets, before returning to the Village bringing Tara, Lily, and Meghan with us.

Yesterday had been on hell of a good day. First the military things and now the warehouse food. Things were definitely looking up and I was settled on the purpose of keeping things that way. All the plans were made, everything had been defined, all the stuff we’d need were ready, and we were set to start working on the cleanup today.

But right now the sun was just coming up and I was standing in the kitchen in front of the stove, slowly mixing the God-blessed powdered milk with water, sugar and oats, a handful of blackberries on the side just waiting to top it. I watched the mixture slowly thicken and bubble as, by my side, Daryl poured hot water into the ground coffee filled cloth-filter; fresh, marvelous smelling coffee coming out of it into the waiting mugs. Just behind us, on the floor, Honey was laying, her head up, simply there, keeping us company. It was quiet, the sunlight softly coming into the half-open kitchen window over the sink, birds outside singing, and the trees dancing with the wind.

It was a sort of peace we all didn’t get to feel often these days, in this new life. It was to be cherished. I looked up from the slowly bubbling oatmeal to look at Daryl by my side and caught him watching me. His eyes were soft and his lips were slightly curved up.

“Ya smilin’,” he told me in a whisper making me smile more.

“Yeah?” I asked and he nodded. “Yeah...” I whispered looking back at the pan. “It’s just… _This_. I like this.”

“You like oatmeal that much?”

I giggled at his light tease.

Yeah, _me_ , Sam Danes, _giggling_.

“You know what I mean…”

Daryl got one mug in each hand and moved to stand behind me even as he took a sip of his coffee, handing me the other from over my shoulder. I held it, feeling he warm porcelain in my palm and took a sip. The feeling of the sweetened caffeine, combined with Daryl’s hand on my waist and his warm lips lowering to my neck had me sighing and closing my eyes, letting myself lean back against his chest. He kept kissing me there, my neck bent to the side against his shoulder.

“I know what ya mean,” he breathed against my neck, his voice low and raspy, “You like this…” and he scraped his teeth on my skin, his tongue coming to lick at the same spot after just a moment. He felt me shiver in his arms, a moan rising from my throat. “And you love this,” he whispered as he pushed my head away from him, making me look down and expose the nape of my neck, lowering his teeth and kisses one by one from there to my upper back.

“Oh, you know it, babe…” I moaned and allowed my hips to dance back against him. He twitched inside his pants and I smiled, satisfied, when his hand tightened his grip on my hip even as he rested the mug he’d been holding on the sink. He quickly turned off the stove burner, making the oat slowly stop bubbling.

“We got time for this?” he asked against my nape, his hand coming up to cover one of my breasts firmly.

“I don’t know, we ain’t never done quickies before,” I chuckled.

He pulled me hard against his crotch, his hips pressing into mine, “If ya up for the challenge…”

I laughed, “Oh, you know me, baby,” I said and looked behind us at the floor where Honey was lazily looking straight at us, her long tongue out. “Just not sure I want an audience…”

“I’ll let’er out,” and he let go of me.

As he bent to take her food bowl from the ground, opened the cabinet where we kept her food, filled it, and went out to the front porch, closely followed by the happy, hungry dog, I undressed. He had, just like that, with a few words and kisses on my neck, turned me on like crazy, and I had to have him now, even though we didn’t have much time. When he closed the door and saw me, he stopped right there to take me in for a second, my shirt and bra nowhere to be seen and my hands working on unzipping my grey cargo pants, a smile on my face when I saw his expression.

He instantly raised his arms to pull his shirt off over his head and throw it away, and moved to the side table by the couch to get a condom. Lowering my pants and underwear, I stepped out of them and covered the two steps that separated the sink from the dining table, and hopped up to seat on top of it. Shirtless and with the pack held between his teeth, Daryl came in to stand in front of me, his eyes roaming over my body and a filthy expression in his face. Just looking at him now gave me the chills and I couldn’t wait to have him moving inside me.

He held my legs and shoved them open, not so gently, and stepped between them, right before bringing his hands to his buttons. I rested back on my hands to watch as he pushed his hand inside and pulled his cock out, letting the pants lower just a bit. He pumped himself once, twice, even though he was already hard, looking down between my spread legs, and I licked my lips at the sight. _Damn, Daryl_ … This man was gonna kill me.

“Bring it, baby,” I told him in a horny whisper.

He was fast in rolling the condom down his erection, just as eager as I was by his hardness and the look on his face. He bent his knees a little, one hand holding my left leg up by the back of my knee and the other holding and slowly gliding his cock up and down my folds, from my entrance to my clit and back down.

“Let’s see how fast I can get ya to cum,” he told me, his voice low and raspy, and finally pushed in.

Oh, the stretch inside… His groan, his hands grabbing the back of my legs strongly, the way his eyes were glued on our bodies as he disappeared inside me, how his lips were parted and his breath labored in pleasure… The way he slowly pulled out, his cock sliding deliberately out of me nearly all the way, only to push in again, this time hard, pushing my whole body up with it, only not sliding away because his hands were holding me in tightly in place…

I cried out loud, letting my body fall back onto the wood, my arms up and hands resting against the wall behind the table, but keeping my head up to look at him. I couldn’t stop staring and moaning curses as he started fucking me hard, his hips working up against me. I looked down at where we were connected, seeing his cock disappear into me and slide out over and over and _damn_! It seemed like we’d be damn fucking good at the quickie thing too.

“Goddamnit Daryl, you got no idea how hot you look from here!” I managed to formulate words within the moans.

He still looked up and down my body, from my eyes to us fucking, and had a smug, filthy little smile on his lips as he growled “Ya should see what I see, girl…”

Daryl sped up then, his hips slapping repeatedly and loudly against mine, and when after a few thrusts he bent his knees just a little more, changing the angle, I felt it coming. I hissed aloud and groaned, my head falling back on the table as it washed over me, my whole body trembling and my hips jerking against him out of control.

And there was the smug smile on his face when I opened my eyes, the last of my orgasm still rolling in waves out of me, and he laughed breathlessly even as he fucked me, and growled “Beautiful… So fuckin’ beautiful,” and then as his own orgasm came there were no words, just his erratic thrusts, his hip flush against mine and he buried himself deep and cried my name over and over, twitching inside.

Damn, how I loved seeing this. It made me cum just a little more as I stared up at him, breathing hard and smiling like a loon.

“You’re the fuckin’ best, you know that?”

He huffed a proud laugh as he licked his lips and let go of the back of my legs and slapped my ass hard, making me yelp and laugh. Still deep and throbbing inside me, Daryl rested his hands on the table by my sides and leaned down until his mouth found mine, giving me a dirty, breathless kiss.

“I love you so fuckin’ much…” he whispered against my lips.

“Love you more…”

And on the stove, our breakfast was still warm, just waiting for us.

* * *

There was no shade on the roof of the one-story convenience store where I was positioned with Michonne, Paul, and Morales and it was getting goddamn hot. We’d been in the area for hours getting things ready, it seemed to be nearly noon already. Covering my eyes to make a shade, I stood on the edge of the building, looking around. There was horrible music coming from inside the warehouse. Because its walls were metal, it seemed like the noise was even louder, strong bass, and artificial sounds making me frown. Paul was swaying a little in rhythm with it, and I don’t think he was aware of it. Michonne has the same frown I had, she’d always hated electronic music.

The walkers were starting to approach, still slowly. Most were coming from the dirt road that led Woodbury to the warehouse, but there were other stray ones coming from every direction. We knew that would happen but there was just no way of preventing it. As they started to get closer, we all got out of sight as we sat down on the hot concrete of the roof. Across and far from us, on the other side of the warehouse, the others were positioned and hiding from the oncoming herd on the top of trees. I hoped they were safe there, and I trusted they were. Daryl, Merle, Carol, and Jerry were not visible from here, but I knew they were aware the herd was coming because my radio cracked a little, some of them pressing the speaker button twice, not saying anything. I returned the signal, letting them know we were also alright.

I wished Glenn or Tara would send a signal too, but minutes passed and there was still nothing. They had gone together in a car to Woodbury so they’d do just what Morales had done just days before at the prison – attract the walkers away. We knew not all of them would get baited by nearby music, so the car and the noise they’d make would be extra help. This time it wasn’t one lone person, driving aimlessly with a herd behind. They had a street to follow, weapons, communication radios, and a plan.

Tara was there working with us. Yesterday when I met her and her sister and niece, and they were introduced to everyone else at the warehouse, she had immediately volunteered to help and had been working with us ever since. We had accommodated the three of them in a house on Second Street and Lily had been immensely grateful for it, for being able to tuck her little girl in a real bed. This morning Meghan had already approached the Woodbury kids and was off with them playing somewhere around the Village. This was one of the reasons I thought it would be better for them to move into WB instead of staying with us. It’d be better for the kid.

Glenn and Tara were fine, it was all probably all fine, they hadn’t been gone for that long. I just worried way too much about everything. Daryl has been telling me that since the beginning, but it was a struggle. I didn’t have to worry for too long after that, though. The number of walkers approaching started to increase, the throat-closing stench preceding them, the buzz of the swarm of flies getting also louder and louder until it was possible to hear it even with the walkers' moans and grunts and the loud music playing inside the warehouse. I lifted the cloth I had tied around my neck to cover my nose, but it didn’t do much to help with the solid smell.

Like cattle, the herd of what once were like a couple of hundreds of living people marched into the patio through the open gate – which in minutes was crushed to the ground with the chain-link fence – and into the warehouse through the wide-open, double sliding doors. We couldn’t see anything in there from the angle we were hiding, but it seemed like they were disappearing into the portals of an alternate reality, disappearing in there one after the other, and they just kept going in, not minding or noticing they were probably crushing, stepping over or squishing each other against walls and shelves.

Just when the size of the herd started to visibly diminish – now we could even see the concreted ground down there – we saw Glenn and Tara pass by in the car, finally reaching us with another herd behind them. They accelerated away then, disappearing again along the road, making the walkers that had been following them turn their attention to the other herd and the music, making the ground disappear from view once again.

Like cattle. If you know how to do it, you can control and guide them anywhere you want.

The idea of ill-intentioned people figuring that out was terrifying.

We’d been there waiting and hiding for a long time now. I could feel my skin getting sunburned and the drips of sweat rushing down on my back and between my breasts. But it didn’t matter, because at every second now we were getting closer to action. The herd was mostly all inside. From where we were, I could see a few of them inside, the mass nearly crowding the doors now, just a small group of them still stumbling their way to join the others inside.

“It’s like thirty of them,” Michonne said as she crouched by my side.

“If we close it now, we can take’em,” I agreed.

Agreeing, I took the radio from my waistband to press the button but was beat by it coming to life and Daryl’s voice coming out of it.

Even right now I still marveled that I could even hear his voice at all.

“Ya’ll ready to go?”

“More than ready,” I told him as I held the radio button. “Glenn, Tara, where are you?”

“Look across the street,” we all heard Glenn say. Michonne, Paul and Morales looked too when I did, my eyes falling on an old white van, half-burned and turned on its side, some twenty yards away. Glenn and Tara looked at us over the side of the van, behind which they were hidden, and waved largely but soundlessly.

I waved back and looked at Morales, who was sitting on the concrete, his feet planted on the edge of the roof for support. Around his gloved fists, he held strongly the end of one of the long ropes that were firmly tied to the warehouse doors.

“Ready, Mo?” I asked.

“Ready as hell”, he said as he shook his head and grasped the rope even tighter around his fists.

I pressed the radio button again, “Jerry, ya ready?”

“He’s ready,” Daryl answered.

“Alright, let’s get this shit done! On my count, three, two, one!”

Both ropes tensioned up for a moment as they pulled before the doors started to heavily and slowly slide closed, trapping the crowd inside and making the ones out smash their faces and fists over and over on the now closed metal.

“Arrows!” Merle’s voice thundered over the radio and I got up instantly as I grabbed my crossbow, already cocked and armed, and aimed out, knowing Daryl was doing the exact same right now. I started shooting arrow after arrow at the dead’s heads, getting 4 out of 5. As I shot the last one, Michonne, Morales, and Paul were already climbing down the ladder to the ground and running to the patio, the others coming from the woods as well and Glenn and Tara from behind the van. Leaving the crossbow there to retrieve later, I jumped from the roof to the ground and got my two guns from the shoulder holster as I ran to join the others in front of the warehouse doors.

It was like fighting the dead with a soundtrack. I ran to join the others and shot one nearby walker in the head, the second gun soon doing the same, both walkers falling at the same time to the concrete. There was the sound of shots and knives through skulls and the katana cutting the air. When I looked, Tara was struggling to remove her knife from a skull, where it got stuck to the hilt, and didn’t notice the walker coming at her from behind. I shot it and it was a pretty nice shot, right between the eyes. She looked at the falling corpse and then at me with her eyes wide and gave me a grateful nod. I didn’t bother to return it, there was no need to thank me. _It’s just what we do, darling_.

I turned from her to keep on clearing the patio but got startled, air rushing into my lungs with a surprised sound, because the walker’s jaws were right there, closer than any walker jaw should be from any living person, but before I could even react, even take a step back to create any distance, a flying hunting knife hit it perfectly into its rotting temple and it fell on my feet. I breathed out, eyes wide, and looked around. Daryl also had his eyes wide, his arm still up on the position he’d thrown the knife. He’d just goddamn saved my life.

All walkers were gone for now, the patio empty and no more visible ones approaching. It wouldn’t stay like that for long, all the noise was still going on and they’d keep coming like moth to the flame. We needed to get this done.

“Let’s swipe the back,” I said, my heart still pounding, “and then burn this shit down.”

* * *

The fire went higher than any of us had thought it would. The music inside stopped, the stereo succumbing to the flames, a few minutes after we set the path of hay on fire, and it burned all the way inside under the feet of the hundreds of oblivious walkers until it reached the pile of pallet wood in the middle of the warehouse, the gasoline gallons in there feeding the fire very quickly.

We stood away from there, on our cars near Woodbury, and watched the flames burn and the smoke rise in dark spirals up to the sky. Minutes before, as soon as we saw the first signs that our plan had worked out, we’d celebrated with cheering and hugging and I looked around at each of those ten people there with me and felt so, _so proud_ , so fuckin proud and positive and empowered.

I knew that with this group, this family, we could get whatever we wanted done. My friends were smiling and the new ones, Tara, Jerry, Paul, seemed happy to be here with us, integrating the group. This was a good thing we were doing here. It was _good_.

Even Daryl, who looked grumpy most of the time when around other people, was smirking. After I hugged and celebrated with each one of the others, Daryl had hugged me tightly, lifted me from the ground and carried me away to the back of one of the cars away from everyone’s eyes. There, he proceeded to hug, kiss, squeeze, and breathe in the hell out of me. I let him, feeling his love for me in every touch, knowing exactly what he was thinking and feeling.

“Daryl… Daryl, love, look at me,” I held his face in my hands and pulled him away from my neck just enough so I could see his face. “I’m ok. Nothing happened, I’m fine.”

“Ya can’t let any walker that close, Sam!”

“I know. I know, but nothing happened. You were there, you killed it. You saved me again…”

“Just - Lemme just…” and he didn’t finish the sentence, simply pulling me into his arms, calmer how, holding me close to him for a long moment. I allowed myself to relax in his arms and my mind to rest a little, without so many though roaming through.

We joined the others a little while later to admire the fire and relish in the fact that this part of a job was a well done one, very well done. The smell of the burnt corpses made it impossible to stay much longer there, though. It was a sickening reminder that even though they were just moving corpses, they had been humans before, the reality of the whole situation coming up our noses. Paul took us to a gated parking lot he knew around there for us to spend the night. We’d decided not to do home to the Village tonight so we could be ready at WB the earliest possible tomorrow.

Andrea radioed from the Village after night had fallen, as we’d agreed she would. We’d made a circle with the cars with people taking turns to watch the area, a small fire in the center. As we set around the fire, I laid down on the concrete of the parking lot with my head resting on Daryl’s crossed legs. We were a little farther from the burning walkers now, so the smell of the artificial instant noodle powder we were preparing, and the huge bush of lemongrass by the parking lot’s fence covered it well enough.

“Well, if I could feel the smell of burning corpses, I would definitely not go check it out,” Andrea was telling us over the radio. “I’d bolt in the opposite direction. If there’s still such a thing as common sense, I think anybody would do the same.”

“Yeah, we think so too,” I agreed. “It’s all quiet here now, I bet we’re safe. How about you, okay?”

“Yes, things are fine ‘round here, but I do have some news,” she said and, around me, I could feel Daryl, Michonne, and Merle’s attention focus more on her voice over the radio. “So this morning I was guarding the platform when a car approached. It was Oscar with Carl and Judith.”

I sat up in surprise, turning my head to share a look with Daryl, “Without Rick?”

“Without Rick. Oscar says Rick himself asked him to do that and then took off in the opposite direction. Said he’d join them soon, didn’t say when and didn’t show up all day.”

“Are they okay?” Michonne asked me.

“Are the kids okay? Did you get Oscar a place to stay?”

“Yes, he’s spending the night at the old infirmary, he’ll pick a place in the morning. The kids are with Beth and Hershel. Carl seems fine given he has no idea where his dad is… And Judith is great, fed and clean and fast asleep the last time I saw her.”

We all shared a confused look over the fire and I continued, “Well, I’m just glad to know the kids are fine. Beth must be over the moon…”

“She is. Anyway, that’s all I know, for now, Rick didn’t share too much with Oscar, he also has no idea where he is.”

“It don’t matter,” Daryl said. “Whatever is it Rick’s got in mind, it won’t harm the Village. His kids are there now.”

I nodded and pressed the button, “It’s fine, we’ll take care of them whatever happens. Thank you for letting us know.”

“Don’t mention it,” she said and moved on, “See, I was thinking I want to join you all tomorrow for the clean-up? I know it isn’t the planned group, but when the three of you are out there I kinda feel like I should too. Like old times, you know?”

Michonne smiled at that and so did I, “A little more people now than in the old times,” I let go of the button and asked the others “What do you think?”

Merle shrugged, a cigarette hanging from his lips, “She wanna join, let’er join.”

“One more set of hands won’t hurt,” Daryl agreed.

So I told her it was alright before we finished the call. We finished eating instant noodles and lemongrass tea before settling to sleep. We had a big day waiting for us tomorrow.


	58. Day 323

Woodbury looked like a little suburban town enclosed by brick walls. I had no idea what it had been before, when society still existed, or why it was walled in the first place, but it didn’t matter anymore. The fact was that, according to Paul, there was a broken gate on one of the sides, from where the Walkers had come in, and the gateless area that has closed by parked trucks – the one we have used to climb out of there that night when escaping the Governor.

Everything was quiet now after most of the dead had walked out of the town through the broken gate. No sounds could be heard inside, but as we looked into Woodbury through it, we could see the remaining ones in there, dormant, none coming out, none going in anymore, but a big part of them still hovering around this gated area. We went to the trucks then, to get in by climbing over them.

The first loud pop of a pistol shot reached our ears as it hit the truck window, glass flying everywhere, just as the second hit the frame below us. In an instant, we all jumped from where we’d been on top of the trucks observing the streets below us, the few walkers wandering in there not presenting too much of a threat, to the ground inside Woodbury, taking cover behind the walls on each side of the entrance.

“Everyone okay?!” I asked aloud as I cocked my shotgun.

By their startled tones as they all answered, I knew I had not been the only one who had not seen it coming. I’d seen no people around, no cars, no sounds, nothing, and then just like that one or more of us could have been killed by those shots and we didn’t even know who was out there. My scare passed pretty quickly, giving place to instant rage. _Who the fuck had shot us?!_

No time for this now, the commotion woke the walkers up and they were coming up the street towards the trucks, and I knew whoever had done it, it’d been calculated. They’d have us fighting walkers, too busy to see that the fuck they were doing. I looked across the entrance to where Paul was crouching down, trying to take a peek outside to see who was out there.

“ _Paul?!_ ” I whispered aloud and he looked at me quickly and then ahead at the street just for a moment before gesturing us all to follow him.

He ran ahead to the closest townhome on the main street and the rest of us ran after him. Just three or four walkers had reached us by then, I stabbed one in the brain even as I ran and someone else dealt with the others. Paul opened the house door and busted in, finding it thankfully free of walkers.

“The roof,” Paul said already halfway up the stairs.

I ran after him but stopped before climbing up while Daryl, Merle, Michonne, and Carol were already running after him, “ _You!_ ” I said pointing at the general direction of Glenn, Tara, Jerry, Morales, and Andrea, “doors and windows, and keep an eye on the walkers!”

And I flew up the two flights of stairs three steps at a time, reaching the others as they were passing through the threshold that led to the roof. Running in a crouch to the edge, we all got behind the half wall and looked out. Down there, climbing up the sides of the trucks at the entrance, a few of them already up and crawling on their way to jump down inside Woodbury, was what seemed to be a men-only group of around 10.

From the roof, we could see the others downstairs yelling at them to drop the weapons and they started yelling back, saying the same, all hiding, but they still hadn’t seen us up there. It was a tense moment when any of them could just decide to shoot and kill one of us. By my side, Daryl pointed the gun he’d had in hand since the first shot up to the sky and pressed the trigger. The shot popped loudly and the men all flinched – myself and all the others did too, to be honest – crouching, raising their arms for protection, and only then a few of them looked at us up there, all rifles, shotguns, and crossbow pointing down at them, and they seemed to understand they were outnumbered and outsmarted.

“Drop the weapons!” we heard Tara yell firmly from down there.

They obeyed. Hands were raised and guns were put to the ground, and now we could see Tara approach them, her Bushmaster trained at the men, closely followed by Glenn, Andrea, and Jerry.

“Merle,” I told him and I lowered my crossbow and prepared to go downstairs again, “stay up here and keep your aim at’em. They as much as _move_ funny, you go full Atlanta roof on’em!”

“I’ll stay too,” Carol said without moving from her position, her eye posed on the scope of her R8 rifle, and she was the pure image of focus and concentration.

I was so proud of who she was becoming!

Saying nothing else, I left the roof and went down back to the street closely followed by Daryl, Paul, and Michonne, all of our weapons being raised and aiming again as we ran out of the house towards them. Morales and Jerry had their backs to the group, facing the street and keeping an eye on the walkers. Michonne instantly joined them, her katana posed and ready.

I wonder now if someone told them to do that or it had been simple instincts. Both possibilities were good, because had I been there that was what I’d tell some of them to do. The group was growing and had new people in it, but the energy and the lines of thought of every one of them seemed to be the very same.

No time to think about it at that very moment though. As we got to them, my pistol pointing at the head of the man who was ahead of them all, in a clear _I am in charge_ position, I noticed Glenn had looked from the men to me, with a very pointed look. I found his eye, and he looked again at the group, at a particular point, showing it to me.

Right there, among the men in the back of the group, was a very surprised looking Rick Grimes.

 _Motherfucker_.

“Andrea, Glenn, take their guns,” I told them and they lowered their weapons to star kicking the guns on the ground away from them. “ _Rick?_ ” I said louder, looking from him to the man quickly and again. Rick had his hands up and was shaking his head, a baffled expression on his fully bearded face. “Are you kiddin’ me?!” I completed.

The man in front of me, white hair and leather jacket looked over his shoulder at Rick, huffed out a little laugh, and, with a smirk, looked at me again.

“Those the traitors who left ya for that bitch, Grimes?”

Rick didn’t answer, he just looked down, still shaking his head.

Somewhere by my side, Glenn asked “What about the kids, Rick?” making him look up again, from Glenn to Daryl and at me quickly.

“I had Oscar take them to your place yesterday morning,” Rick said.

“We know that,” Daryl told him.

“Now, hold on a minute,” the white-haired man with his hands up said as in the background both Andrea and Glenn walked over from men to men taking weapons from them, “Ya telling me you _did_ know where their place is?”, he asked angrily, making Rick look back at him from over his own raised arm. “Ya said ya didn’t know, ya lying sonofabitch!”

“And why the hell would I tell you that?” Rick asked him. “I might barely know you but I know you’d go there to _claim_ it. Ain’t that that you do?”

“Well, good luck trying to claim anything from _us_ ,” I told the man even as I considered the situation. So from what I could gather in those few moments, Rick ha just barely met this group, probably even after sending his kids with Oscar to the Village, and had told them his story but omitted that he actually knew where the Village was in order to keep them away.

It was obviously not for us. Not for me or the Village. It was because his children were there and he didn’t want an altercation to happen there. But to be fair, maybe it did have a little bit to do with the Village itself and our group, maybe he had gotten better from his freakout, maybe he was trying to fix things by taking his children there and taking time out to clear his head from the grief, depression and that madness we had seen in his eyes just a few days before.

“I didn’t know it was you,” Rick said, looking around at all of us, then at Daryl with a nod, and back at me.

“You’re attacking communities now, Rick, that it?” I asked him.

The sound of Michonne’s katana slicing through a skull could be heard somewhere behind us.

“We didn’t know there’d be people here,” he said with his arms still in the air. “Saw all the walkers, was trying to figure a way of clearing’em away.”

“Done already,” Daryl told him and looked at the leader, leaning more towards him, the tip of his arrow now even closer to his forehead. “Ya got no fuckin’ claim here, asshole.”

“The smoke,” the asshole said after flinching a small step back, “Was that you?”

“’Course it was!” I told them. “Cleared over two hundred fuckin’ walkers from this place only to have ya come here an’ attack it?” I asked shaking my head in warning.

But Rick was nodding, his head lowered and his eyes on mine, and he had a little smile on his face. He looked at Daryl by my side, holding his gaze for a moment, and then nodded at him. He looked back at me and took a step then, slowly, and with his raised hand, he pointed down at himself with an eyebrow nod, kinda like asking permission to do something.

It got me a bit nervous. The men behind him were not totally quiet, they did have their hands up but were tense, looking around at each other, planning on an attack. I couldn’t be sure if Glenn and Andrea had taken all of their weapons because they were doing it quite fast because it was a risk to be walking among them right now. There was absolutely nothing alright about that very moment.

I raised my chin at Rick, authorizing him to do whatever he meant but making it clear I had my eye on every single movement of as I hep my pistol with both hands aimed at his head. Slowly, he lowered his right hand to the back of his pants, his hand coming up again after a second with his Colt Python in hand, held by the body, the handle turned to me. He offered it to me as he lifted his eyebrows, asking me to take it.

I looked down at the gun and back at him and ignored it completely. In just a moment I knew Rick was back. I knew he’d be by our side in this altercation that was about to happen any second now. I believed him when he said he didn’t know it was us, and because he’d sent Carl and Judith to the Village yesterday morning, I knew he’d begun trying to make amends. So after just a moment, I looked past him to the other man, the leader, who was under the careful aim of Daryl’s crossbow.

“Turn around, all of you!” I barked suddenly, my attention not on Rick anymore because I had more important things to worry about now, honestly. My peripheral vision caught the sight of one of the men flinch at my voice.

“Walkers!” Merle’s voice sounded aloud from the roof where he still kept his aim on the men on the street.

From between two of the townhomes buildings, a crowd of walkers came to join the stray ones Michonne, Jerry, and Morales had been keeping at bay on the street. Things happened very fast after that. I didn’t turn to see the walkers, but I did see when the men started reacting trying to take advantage of the distraction. I did see their leader try to knock Daryl’s crossbow out of his hand, which made me fail to see another of them crouch down and advance at me in time to avoid his tackle. Gunfire was sounding all around when my back hit the asphalt, air rushing out of my lungs painfully and his weight over me as he shoved my pistol away from my reach. I pushed him from me, trying to keep his arms away but he started trying to punch down on me with both hands. With one arm up and covering my face, I tried feeling for my thigh gun holster. It took more seconds than I’d hoped for me to be able to grab it and pull it out, and when I finally cocked the gun, one of the motherfucker’s hand had grabbed my neck.

I know I was screaming in rage when I pressed the gun under his chin and he froze. Having another man on top of me trying to strangle me… _Again_. _Goddamnit_ , it got me infuriated and panicking at the same time. The small moment when the man’s eyes widened as he looked down at me, feeling the still cold tip of the gun pressed under his jaw strangely made me feel a whole lot better, and as I pressed the trigger I may have had a smirk on my face.

His body didn’t fall on top of me as I was expecting. Instead, it was lifted up by the back of his shirt and all but thrown away by Daryl, who then instantly pulled me up to my feet by my shoulders and looked me over, worry clear on his face.

“Gotta move!” we both heard Michonne yell and I looked around.

All of the men had fallen dead, except for that fucking white-haired leader who, was there on the ground breathing hard, his hands around an arrow stuck to his stomach. Daryl was pulling me, my pistol he’d picked up from the ground in his hand, but I stopped to look down at the man.

“Fuckin’ bitch,” was what he told me even as blood came out of his mouth, and those were the last words of his miserable life. I shot him in the forehead without even thinking for a second and finally ran away from there with Daryl even as I holstered the gun back on my thigh.

Only Andrea was still near us, the others had already run back towards the same house we’d been before. On the background, I could hear people’s voices from the house yelling at us to rush, to just run as the walkers were closing in on us. Daryl shoved one away from our path with using his crossbow, but it was like every single walker that had remained inside those walls had closed in on us. They were on Daryl’s heels when he pushed me inside the door after Andrea got in, and as he entered we both turned to try to close the door, the others joining us, but the rotting ones were in a larger number. The door didn’t close all the way and we had to step back as they spilled across the threshold. Somebody yelled something that sounded like _back door_ and everyone ran, but the walkers were inside and blocked my way. Daryl got pushed away to the corridor like everyone else, but Andrea and I couldn’t cross the entry way of the house anymore. She had already clung to my shirt and was dragging me up the stairs with her, and I know she did it because she knew I was thinking of ways of facing a fucking crowd of walkers just not to be separated from Daryl.

She dragged me away and most likely saved my damn life.

So I ran up with her as the starving but quite energetic walkers climbed the stairs behind us. As we reached the landing, I felt Andrea’s weight falling to the floor, nearly pulling me with her, and I saw a walker clawing at her leg. She kicked and screamed and I stabbed it in the brain with the knife I didn’t even see myself taking in hand. Andrea crawled away as I stabbed another one, a third’s jaw dangerously near my arm. I kicked it in the chest, making it roll down the stairs and take down a fourth with it, just as yet another one reached me and I stabbed it as well. The walkers coming up the stairs were having a hard time getting up and passing over each other, so I got a few seconds to think but –

Andrea screamed.

I turned to her as if in slow motion, my chest getting ripped by the panic in her voice. She was still on the floor, facing down, a walker on top of her, biting into her shoulder and neck. My scream probably formed some words but I don’t know what they were as I all but jumped on the walker, moving its head away from her and piercing into its brain with my knife. I shoved it away, the groans of the walkers on the stairs getting a bit louder as they started making their way up again.

“Come on!” I yelled, “Get up, we gotta go!”

Andrea was in a full panic now, screaming and crying, and she couldn’t think straight. I had to do that for her now. Sheathing the knife, I grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her up, her weight nearly dead in my arms as I dragged her away and into the nearest door I could find. It was a bedroom, and once we entered, I let her slide to the floor and closed the door, turning the knob to lock it. There was a loud, strong thud as the dead’s bodies slammed into it from the other side. I looked around for a quick moment before leaning my lower body’s weight onto the door and reaching my arms out to grab and drag a heavy wooden dresser to push against it.

The thuds continued but it didn’t seem like they’d be able to break through the wood and get passed the dresser. Most of the walkers had followed the others across the house downstairs, not many up here with us. Once I was sure of it, in a few seconds just staring at the door with my breath ragged, I turned to look into the room and at Andrea. She was on the floor where she’d fallen, crying desperately, a hand covering her neck.

She’d been bitten… Andrea had been bitten and there was nothing I could do to help her. I couldn’t amputate the bitten limb. I couldn’t stop the infection that had probably already started spreading over her body. I couldn’t stop the bleeding; I couldn’t stop her pain.

For now, all I could do was cry as I paced around the bedroom, hands in my head. I think I was saying “No, no, Andrea,” or something like that because I couldn’t believe this had happened. None of us were supposed to get bit. This was not supposed to happen. She shouldn’t, nobody should. She wasn’t even supposed to be here! She wasn’t on the original team for the cleanup, she should have stayed home, safe, where she’d stay alive…

“Sam,” her voice brought me back, even if it was just a desperate little whisper.

“I’m here,” I said as I stopped pacing and fell to my knees by her side. “I’m here, honey, it’s okay.”

“I’m sorry, Sam…” she cried.

I grabbed her hand between both of mine, “You got nothin’ to be sorry about. Ya hear me? _I’m_ sorry, I shoulda had your back…”

“You were killing the walkers, you couldn't, it’s not your fault…”

I caressed her face feeling her tears on my palm. “Let me help you to the bed?” I asked her and, as she seemed to have calmed down a little bit, she nodded. This was going to be fast… She already had almost no energy, so I did it all for her. Got her up, walked her to the bed, and laid her there before joining her, gathering her in my arms and rocking her like a child.

“I’m so sorry, Andrea… I’m so sorry…”

“Shh, Sam, not your fault…”

“I don’ wanna lose you…” I cried, tears falling free down my face. “You’re my sister, I love you…” I saw her give me a smile among her own tears and she looked up at me. “I’m so proud of you, Andrea… So fuckin’ proud of you. You are so strong, so tough, I am so glad you and I had a chance to be friends after a rough start…” and she laughed a little, closing her eyes and nodding as she cried more. “It was a privilege to be able to get to know you, to have been your friend”.

Andrea reached for my hand and squeezed it strongly in hers as she looked up at me, but she didn’t hold on to it strongly for too long. Her grip loosened a bit, even as she still tried to hold on.

“Thank you for not giving up on me,” she said. “You taught me so much, so, so much. Please don’t blame yourself for this. This wasn’t your fault. It fucking sucks, but it wasn’t your fault. Please, Sam, promise me you won’t keep feeling guilty. Promise me.”

I shook my head, “I can’t promise that. I shoulda -”

“No,” she shook her head decidedly. “Don’t. You hear me? Don’t. Promise,” I just cried in answer, closing my eyes and sobbing loudly. “Sam, promise me! I’m drying here, come on.”

I opened my eyes and tried to take a deep breath, but the air only came into my lungs in short, painful puffs. “Ok. Ok, I won’t. I promise. Ok? I promise.”

“Good. ‘Cause you don’t deserve it. Now listen to me,” she said in a serious tone. Her hand squeezed mine a little less strongly now. “Tell Michonne and Merle how much I love them. Tell them they’re my brother and my sister, even though never before I thought I’d call Merle Dixon my brother,” she laughed weakly. “Tell him I’m proud of him. Tell Michonne she’s one of the best human beings I have ever met,” her hand nearly let go of mine now, her breathing more difficult by the second and her eyes fluttering. “And tell Will I love him and it was so good to be with him all those months and please don’t let him mourn on me for too long. He’s gotta go on, he’s got a whole family around him now.”

She was exhausted after speaking so much, breathing hard and if she’d run a marathon, her eyes nearly closing and I could see her fighting to keep them open, to keep conscious. She shouldn’t have to strain herself, she’d been fighting for too long now. It was time to stop fighting and finally rest.

“Hey...” I whispered tenderly down at her, making her open her eyes now and lock them on mine. “Say hello to Amy for me.”

She smiled and closed her eyes, her lips forming a word in a quiet and peaceful whisper.

“Amy…”

I sobbed aloud when her face relaxed and her body fell back onto the bed. I looked at her for a few seconds, unable to form words but still apologizing to her among my hiccups. I knew what I’d have to do now and it killed me instantly.

For the third time, I’d have to pierce a knife through the brain of someone dear to me. Sophia… Ma… and now the woman who had become my sister. I rested her head carefully on the mattress and reached for my holstered knife. This wasn’t Andrea… She was gone already, I made sure by holding her wrist between my fingers and looking for it, but finding no pulse there. I turned her head away from me slowly, exposing the back of her head to me.

I did it with my eyes closed. I wouldn’t be able to deal with the image of the knife entering her skull in my mind.

I don’t know how long before the radio on my waistband creaked alive I had been sitting there, staring at her pretty face, now frozen in a relaxed stance. It was Daryl’s voice, calling my name, asking where was I. I heard his voice outside in the corridor at the same time.

“I’m here!” I yelled from the bed, my throat hurting at the effort.

I immediately heard his strong steps rushing to the door. He tried opening it, “It’s safe, open up!” he said and I also heard other voices out there with him, Merle’s rising above others as he asked, “Andrea with you?”

I was getting up slowly as they spoke, as if I weighed a thousand pounds, and rushing numbly to the door. As I got to it, Daryl tried opening again, forcefully.

“Hold on, there’s a dresser,” I said as I pushed it away.

I unlocked the door as soon as it was out of the way and opened it. I tried doing it slowly, maybe because I was feeling a numbness spread all over my body, but Daryl was eager to get in and pushed it open.

He looked me over as he held me by the shoulders, asking “Y’alright?”

Others came in after Daryl. I saw Michonne look around, at me, and then at the bed. I started nodding at Daryl to tell him I was fine, but I then I was crying and ended up shaking my head instead. Daryl looked around trying to understand and also looked at the bed, where Michonne was slowly approaching, her eyes on Andrea. Merle was frozen under the threshold, expressionless. I moved to the side of the bed and circled one arm around Michonne’s back, my other hand holding on to her arm. She immediately broke out a sob that sounded like Andrea’s name and turned to me, our arms encircling each other.

“I tried – I couldn’t… I’m so sorry,” I was choking when I felt another hug, Merle’s arms tightly holding on to both Michonne and me, pulling us both against his chest. He was silent and strong as we sobbed in his arms.

* * *

We were all here in the same spot almost a week ago. It was long into the night, maybe it was three in the morning, maybe it was just ten at night, I had no idea. The palpable sadness in the air was almost the same as it was six days ago when we were all around the freshly dug grave that received Ma’s body. Now, just by her resting place, a new grave was open and waiting. Ma’s loss a week ago had not been a surprise to any of us, but it had hurt anyways.

But with Andrea… The pain of her death was terribly worsened by the suddenness of it. I still couldn’t believe it had happened, the moment around the graves just so surreal as I felt like I was outside the scene watching it curiously. Andrea had offered to go and join us when she’d been safe inside the Village. She had wanted to be there with the rest of us and help like it was before. She had just wanted to be with us, to be part of the mission, and now…

I couldn’t shake off the tight, painfully piercing feeling in my chest that it was my fault. I should have told her to stay because we were all set, we had enough people. I should have protected her when she fell, I should have been able to kill all the walkers before that one, that damned one could reach her. It was only the two of us there and now she was gone.

The warm, orange glow of the torches around the graveyard, now with four graves, illuminated the group as they heard me speak for Andrea. I couldn’t even make out the words I was saying. Michonne was by my side, her right hand tightly holding mine. Daryl stood on my other side, his arms across my back and his hand holding my hip firmly, his body glued to my side. Merle was standing behind Michonne and me, one hand resting on each one’s shoulder. I hadn’t heard his voice much since he entered that bedroom hours ago.

Paul and Jerry had probably taken over the care of the Village for tonight because I didn’t see them around, but I did see each one of my Village citizens. The Morales’ were near us, Emma hugging Miranda’s side and David standing by Mo. Sasha and Tyrese stood side by side, both holding their own hands in front of their bodies, looking down respectfully. Carol was standing by Sasha, arms crossed, tears falling down her face. By our right, Glenn and Maggie were standing with their arms around each other, Hershel and Beth right by them. Oscar was standing a little behind the group, clearly feeling out of place but solid there, paying his respects. Rick had Judith sleeping in one arm and the other around Carl’s shoulders as the boy clung to his waist. 

By Andrea’s body, on a wooden plank on the ground, wrapped in white sheets, Will was standing in Mikki’s arms, crying silently. He was desolate. He hadn’t believed what Daryl told him as soon as we got out of the cars inside the Village. He only believed when he saw her body on the back seat of the truck, and I don’t think he had stopped crying for a second since then.

Earlier, as I sat on the bed with Michonne and Merle, saying our goodbyes to our sister and trying to give each other strength, Daryl had taken over the mission and led the others to finish clearing and securing Woodbury. He showed up twice during the rest of the day to check on us, bring us water, give me a hug. Then later, as the light inside the bedroom had already started to fade, he had come back with the others to let us know it was done. The mission was accomplished. The three of us had left with Daryl to go sit in the living room, quiet and exhausted, while Carol, Tara, and Glenn took care of Andrea’s body, cleaning her the best they could and wrapping her in the whitest sheets they could find around Woodbury. Merle returned upstairs when they were done and carried her in his arms down the stairs, across the hallway, and out the door to the car parked outside. He lay her carefully on the back seat and closed the door.

Now, under the glow of the torches, I spoke about Andrea and how my relationship with her had not had a good beginning. How she and I were so different from each other that our personalities had clashed. But I didn’t speak too much about it because what mattered was how we had been able to overcome it. I spoke about how we had gotten to really know each other on the time we spent alone after the fall of the farm, how each day we learned a new thing about each other. I had been through so much with her and for a while, she’d been the only one I could count on. She had never left my side and helped me so many times throughout the dangers out there and the pregnancy. She’d been by my side and an active part of the building of this new society, of our Village, and in the end, it had been her drive to be with us, the four of us together out there, that had taken her away from us.

Daryl and Merle left their spot by Michonne and I to lower Andrea’s body down into the grave. Merle refused Daryl’s offer to help him shovel the earth and close the grave; he wanted to do it alone.

People started leaving quietly as if they were just fading away. When Merle finished, he was sweating and crying quietly, sniffing as he tried to keep himself from breaking. Daryl left my side to go hug him, then. Merle let the shovel fall to the ground and accepted his baby brother’s hug. He tried to hold it in for a moment, but gave up and let himself cry.

* * *

“Sam? Daryl?” we heard from behind us and turned from where we were walking up the street, Daryl’s arm around my back, and saw Rick, baby in arm and boy half-asleep on his feet, hugged to his dad’s side.

“Rick?” I said, “Where you staying? You should put Carl to bed, poor thing.”

“Michonne’s letting us stay with her tonight. We’ll pick a place for us tomorrow,” he explained. I just nodded in understanding but still didn’t know why Rick had stopped us now. He continued after a second, “Mind if I speak to you for a moment? I know it’s not a good time,” he caught himself. “But we can talk tomorrow if you –”

“It’s okay,” Daryl said even as I nodded.

“Sure?” Rick asked.

“Yes, come on in,” I said as I turned to cross the path stones to our house. Honey walked in ahead of us up the steps to the porch and make her way to her food bowl on the corner. I took a seat on the chair under the window and gestured Rick to sit on the couch. Daryl grabbed one of the kitchen chairs and put it there in the living room, sitting on it backward, arms crossed over the backrest. Carl laid down on the couch with his head on a cushion and Rick was able to relax his arms and hold Judith lower on his thighs. I wanted to smoke a cigarette and even a joint tonight, but there were children in the house right now.

“We gotta find’er a stroller,” Daryl said quietly from his chair. “Or one of those things to strap her around ya chest.”

“There’s a baby car seat in the storage,” I told them. “You can use it until we find something better.”

Rick nodded in thanks but said nothing for a few seconds. He seemed to be looking for the right words.

“I wanted you to know how sorry I am for the way I handled things,” he started, right to the point, looking down, and then looked up at me, at Daryl, and back at me, “I’m sorry. I was losing my mind. I got… I still am… Struggling. I thought I was stronger. As a grown man, as a father, as a sheriff, that I’d be more capable to handle all the loss better. I was wrong. I’m not.”

I felt like crying. I had just buried a friend, I had already buried my child, so I could relate to the pain of loss. We were silent for a moment when I swallowed my tears.

“That’s the problem with what people teach boys since they’re little, that they can’t show feelings, that boys don’t cry, that boys gotta be always strong, always manly,” I said and looked away from the window and the darkness outside to Rick and then at Daryl before looking at Rick again. “You all think it’s wrong to let yourself feel things. To cry out loud, to let the feelings out, and then you keep all inside and it eats at ya. Make ya kinda crazy ‘cause it fuckin’ hurts because, and it seems like most men don’t know it, you’re human, simply human, and have _feelings_ like anyone else,” I paused to see Rick look down and nod, agreeing but still silent. “I’m glad you’ve figured it out, Rick. I know you’re still not over any of it, but you’ll be fine. We all are. We’ve all been through loss... We’re going through a loss right now… And believe me, I know what the pain can do to ya. Been there.”

“I know… And your loss was so much worse,” he said looking at me and then down at the sleeping baby in his arms. My eyes followed his. “Losing a baby… I don’t think I’d make it.”

“We can’t compare pains, Rick…” I told him and took a deep, shaky breath, still eyeing the cutest thing in his arms. “Each one knows where the pain hurts the most. Can’t compare it.”

He was silently nodding for a moment and then looked up again and continued, “What I said that day? At the prison?” and he shook his head, “I didn’t mean it. I don’t think you were better off dead, I really don’t.”

I tried a smile but it came up tight-lipped and sad. I knew that since he offered me his gun back at Woodbury earlier today – even though it felt like it was so much longer ago.

“I know,” I told him. “We’re good. Thank you for telling me that.”

Rick looked at Daryl quietly and they shared a look. Daryl nodded at him too, also accepting his apology. Rick seemed the breath a bit better after that.

“You were always part of this group, Rick, since Atlanta,” I said to complete it. I needed to finish this conversation soon, I was exhausted and my body felt like a bag of bricks. “Those were all just bumps on the road, but you’re here now. You’ll be living at the Village and working with us, live everyone else. But there’s one thing you gotta know,” he just looked at me, nodding a little and waiting. “I’ll keep an eye on you. For a while at least. I hope you understand.”

He huffed out a laugh and he nodded and looked between Daryl and me again, “I know. Wouldn’t expect any different. It’s what I’d do too.”

“Good. So we’re good.”

“Thank you,” he told me sincerely and repeated it looking at Daryl too, who just nodded at him. “There are also a few things I’d like to talk to you. About the prison. Been thinking about it, got some ideas.”

“Like what?” Daryl asked him.

“Maybe keep it as a safe place for everyone. For any emergencies. For the Woodbury people too if they ever need it again. Rebuild the fences, maybe make a wall like you’re doing here? Finish cleaning up inside.”

“That’s a good thought…” I told him and looked out again. “We need to map the area. The Village, Woodbury, the Prison… It’s a huge area around all of us, so much we can think about…”

“Not the time,” Daryl said. “We gotta rest. Finish this fuckin’ day.”

I nodded as Rick said, “Yeah, I should go…”

He looked at the sleeping baby and at the sleeping boy in the couch and seemed a little confused about what to do, but Daryl got up saying he’d help him. Rick got up from the couch and Daryl took Judith in his arms, letting Rick bent down to take Carl in his. Carl wasn’t that small anymore and Rick grunted a little as he lifted him up. I followed them out the door and watched them walk away together, the sight of Daryl with a baby in his arms making the pain in my chest tighten even more. He would have been such a great dad…

I was crying again when I got back inside, closing the door after Honey got in, and was still crying quietly when I got into the shower. Tears were just leaking out of me, mixing with the lukewarm water. Daryl got back a few minutes later after walking with Rick to Michonne’s house. There, she had prepared the second bedroom for them, made the bed, and even improvised a little crib for Judith, Daryl told me later.

Now, he just joined me in the shower and held me quietly as I cried against his chest, and later he put me to bed and held me tightly until I finally fell asleep.


	59. Day 1, year 2

The Village was utterly silent. Outside, the streets were dark and quiet, crickets singing with their song disturbed only by owls’ eerie hoots. The sun had only just begun to pale the night sky, still far from the horizon, and I could hear, as I laid there with my eyes closed, the first birds starting to sing. I was laying on my stomach, head nearly hanging from the edge of the bed and my arm fallen, hand resting on the floor. I didn’t have to be touching Daryl to know he was there, the heat of his body warming up us both under the thin sheet. I moved slowly to turn and look at him, rising to rest on my elbows.

This here… This, waking up in bed with the love of my life, his presence _here_ was still amazing to me. The time we spent apart hadn’t healed in me yet. Part of me still hurt from that time, maybe a tiny bit less every day, but it was still there. Seeing him here, so normal, so at home, so whole, still made my heart rush, falling in love with him all over again every time.

His hair was growing fast but he had refused to let me cut it. He was letting it grow unruled and it was now covering his eyes, but he didn’t mind. Every time we talked or stood face to face I would reach to it and take it from his eyes, and he had complained a few times but now had given up and let me reveal his eyes. I think maybe he was starting to do it on purpose. I was letting mine grow too. I still shaved the sides every two weeks or so but the top was growing, and I knew the new world did not care for fashion and pretty hair, but I did feel like a badass with it.

Now, in bed, it was still a bit dark but I could see he was lying on his back, both arms thrown upon the pillow by his head, and he had one leg uncovered, bent up with his knee resting on the wall by his side. The sheet was covering his left leg, his crotch and his stomach, leaving his chest bare. His head was fallen to the side, facing the wall, leaving his neck exposed. He had a cut on his left arm, that he got when we had to escape a store through a window a few days ago on a run out there. I had a huge bruise on the side of my thigh from the same run.

We’d been to a few important runs in the area since the Woodbury people had left the Village and returned home. We’d finally got the brick factory and Home Depot run done, returning home in a few days with enough material to finish the wall and to stock. All construction materials and tools we brought as well, had advanced the building of our communal area speedily. We’d been to plant nurseries to gather seedlings, bulbs, and seeds, as well as tools and fertilizers; we’d been to many farms in the region trying to find livestock. Successfully, I might add. We now had a full functioning chicken coop, and the first chicks to be born at the Village had hatched three days ago. No luck with cows yet, though, and we were not very positive we’d still find any alive this far into the end of the world, but we did find three goats as well as a few ducks who could now be seen swimming in the pond or just strolling around the Village. Honey had had a hard time understanding she was not supposed to chase them.

Resting on my elbows, a silly, sleepy smile on my face, I leaned into Daryl, slowly lowering my lips to his neck. Even though I’d like to let him sleep longer, it was time to wake up. There was work to do, but there was still time, though. I kissed his neck softly and he breathed in deeply and slowly, unmoving. I breathed him in and kissed his neck and shoulder softly and slowly until he moved his arms from up on the pillow o circle my body and pull me closer to his chest, turning his head to me and planting a kiss on my forehead. I laid on him as his arms encircled my body pulling me closer to him. We stayed like that for a while, nearly falling asleep again, but after a few minutes I moved and he groaned a soft complaint. Soft kisses were spread over my skin as he rolled us over and I stretched my arms up, yawning.

“Mornin’, pretty girl,” he murmured as he nuzzled his nose on mine.

I lowered my arms, resting both hands on his face, “Mornin’ babe…”

With a sleepy smile, his eyes still nearly closed, he kissed me on the lips, pressing his on mine for a few seconds, before laying his head on my chest, still not encouraged to get up.

The lazy cuddle was ended by a 90-pound dog who came in a run from the living room through the open door and threw herself upon the bed. Honey came all licking and nuzzling, jumping us both with renewed energy after sleeping all night on the couch. I was squeaking and Daryl was laughing, trying to hold her at bay. I turned to my side to protect from her drool, laughing, and Daryl got up.

“A’right, ya dork,” he said as she stood on the bed, looking up at him with her tongue out and barked loudly. “I’ll take ya out, just chill.”

She jumped to the floor and followed him out excitedly. Honey had gotten used to our morning routine; wake up, go out to do her duties, feed and then go exercise with one of us. It wasn’t easy to keep such a strong, energetic dog, but we adored it. She would run with us or with anyone around who was willing to do anything physical, and she loved fetching things and biting onto the knotted end of a rope we had hanging from a tree. She’d bite into it and not let go for anything in this world, even as we pulled the rope up and her paws left the ground, her muscular body swinging in the air. She had a scar on her back leg, from the shot she took protecting me. Like all of us, Honey had her own war scars.

When Daryl and I got out to the porch, minutes later, Honey sprinted away, meeting Carol and Sasha who were then just passing by on their morning run. It was something all of us did now: exercise, train, take care of ourselves. There was a lot of space inside the Village to do that. Carol and Sasha did that every morning, many laps around Circle Street in the early hours. They had become very close in the past few weeks and Carol had never smiled as much as she did these days. Sasha was an incredibly great improvement after Ed in her life. Honey jumped around them and they stopped to greet and pet her for a while. After shouting our good mornings, they started walking away again as Daryl and I reached the street.

“Kids’ training in thirty?” Carol asked as she walked back to look at us.

“Yeah!” Daryl answered with a hand up to shield his eyes from the rising sun, “Y’all bring all the arrows?”

With a nod, she waved and turned around and restarted her run with Sasha, Honey joining them and unceremoniously abandoning us. I wondered if she really was _our_ dog or if she was everybody's.

We’d been training people in different areas every day. The children were learning a bit of everything – and Beth and David were included within the “children” even though they were teenagers. With them, Carl and Emma, and when Woodbury was visiting, Tara’s niece Lily as well. They were learning endurance, we made them run around the Village, exercise. We made a few tracks and circuits so the whole thing would be fun for them as well. I was teaching them, twice a week, how to climb trees fast, how to fall correctly, the basics of my parkour knowledge and they were catching it all up pretty easily. Sometimes it felt like everything was still all fun and games for them, their laughter and cheering each other echoing through the woods. But when it was arrow’s training like today, or when we took them outside for shooting practice, they would act serious and focused. They were children, but not blind to the reality of life now.

Carl was the best shooter among them all. Rick completed the group lessons he had with the others, taking him out there with him for a bit of father-son bonding. They had a lot to work out on their relationship, which got pretty shaken after everything that had happened at the farm and after Lori’s death. Michonne would go with them sometimes. The Grimes family had yet to choose their own house, they had never left Michonne’s after that first night after Andrea’s funeral. They all had bonded really well; Michonne loved having Judith around and was becoming a good friend to Carl, and at each time I saw the four of them together, they looked a bit more like a family to me. Michonne was still uncertain about Rick after all that had happened, but I knew where this was going. She knew it too.

Here in the middle of the street in front of our house, I reached for Daryl’s hand to pull him to me and we stood chest to chest. With a little side smile, Daryl leaned down to press his lips against mine and slid another one to my cheek.

“See ya later at the shed?” he asked me as he took a step back.

“I’ll be there.”

I may have watched him, crossbow hanging on his back, angel wings and his dig-dick-walk for a few seconds because why not?, before turning away myself and walking between the two houses across from mine and into the woods. The day was already getting hot even if the sun had just only shown up on the horizon behind dense clouds. It was very humid today and it was most likely gonna rain in the afternoon. Good for the crops and for Hershel and Will who had been watering the plantation manually for the past few dry days.

It’d been good that there was a lot of work to do, though, for Will. He’d never ventured out of the Village again after what happened to Andrea and was a bit introspective, but well in general. Hershel, who’d been glad to have Will’s help with the crops and had been spending a lot of time with him, said so. But I did have the feeling Will was not going to go out of the Village anytime soon. Which was fine, there was enough work in here to keep his mind busy and in place. Will was also helping Morales with the project to build a greenhouse, the space for that already chosen and they would start building it sometime this week.

As I walked through the woods toward the back corner of the Village, I could see him and David raking the ground, a pile of dead leaves to the side. I waved at them as a good morning before saying aloud “David, you got arrow training in a few!”

“I’ll be there!” he told me as he rested his arm on the rake.

“Did ya eat?”

“Yeah! There’s breakfast at the shed kitchen.”

“Alright! See ya later!”

I left them behind to keep their work and stopped walking when I got to the three graves under the oak tree. I went there every morning and, like today, sat on the ground facing them and had a quiet moment, thinking about the three of them and about anything else my mind drifted to. It was like a meditation moment, and it was becoming a little bit more peaceful at each passing day. I was learning to let go of the guilt I felt for Andrea’s death, finding my peace with it because I had promised her I would. There were wildflowers on hers and Ma’s grave; Will put on fresh ones every day. On Jack’s, the sunflowers I had planted behind and around his headstone were blooming, making his resting place look pretty and cheerful, like any child’s life should be.

I took a deep, shuddering breath, my nose prickling. It was never gonna stop hurting, I would never not miss having him in my life, I would never stop imagining how he would be now, growing up, looking a bit like me, playing around the Village. But it was becoming a sort of not-desperate pain, just something that was part of me now, part of who I was, a constant pain that would follow me forever and, strangely, something I did not wish that it would completely go away.

After a few minutes, I got up, dusted off the back of my pants, blew them a kiss, and left, walking back to Circle Street towards the center. Downtown, it could be called. I heard movement behind me and turned to see Honey running at full speed towards me, joining me again. She was overexcited from her run with Carol and Sasha, and as part of her training, I had to get her to calm down jut with commands. Before he reached me, I turned to face her and whistled, raising a hand. She stopped by my side, whining in complain, but did sit down by my side without jumping me. Only then I petted her and walked on with her following calmly by my side. Good dog.

“Hey, Sam!” I head Hershel’s voice as I passed by his and Beth’s house. He was standing on his porch, his crutch under his arm, and the other waving at me.

“Morning!” I said smiling and I approached and stood on the bottom of the steps.

From inside their house through the open door, I heard Beth call “Hey, Sam!” as she moved in the kitchen. “Coffee?”

I chuckled and spoke aloud for her to hear me from the inside, “Ever heard me say no to coffee?” and I looked back at Hershel, who was lowering himself to sir on the porch bench. We had found this bench a few days ago on a run, a pretty one and Beth had mentioned the need to have something like that at their house for her old father’s comfort. “So I saw the boys raking the area for the greenhouse,” I started as I leaned against the porch rail facing him.

“Yes, I asked them to. Morales is starting the foundation this afternoon. But I’d like to talk to you about something else, if in the same matter.”

Beth came out bringing a mug of coffee for each of us, waved bye-bye and left us to talk. Hershel spoke about ideas he’d been having for farming, and called it just that: a farm. He wanted to clear the pasture across the road in front of the Village, out there, have a plan to secure it and use the huge space for plantations. Many of the vegetables, fruit, and grain he wanted to plant needed direct sun, and the tall, sparse trees inside the Village were keeping out garden area in the shade for many hours a day. He also said part of the pasture could be used to feed the goats and other livestock we might find any day now. It was great to see him with all the ideas and the energy to go through with them. Hershel had been forced to become a fighter in his old age, lost a leg, had battle wounds, and now he was starting to become the farmer he had been before, the sort of person and worker that made him content. I caught myself smiling and nodding along as he spoke, arms crossed.

“So, what do you think?”

“Well, I think I got no knowledge at all in farming. If ya say you need the direct sun and that you’ll have use for all that huge space out there, damn, I’ll just be really happy to have that much food growing. Ya sure ya can pull it off?” I asked with sincerity and he knew I was talking about his reduced mobility.

“I am sure. I have help, Will’s young and strong and hardworking, and there will always be other people to help.”

“I think you gotta be the one to manage this. It’s your area, anyhow,” I said with a shrug. “Go ahead ‘n talk to people, bring it up to Mo so we can go ahead and build some fencing or something ‘round there, and to Merle ‘bout securing it. I mean, you got it, just run any decision by me or Daryl, but whatever you gotta do.”

He was smiling as I said it, nodding along, and was proud to receive such trust. I had no reason not to trust him at all and he did know more about farming than all the rest of us combined. And after the barn incident at the farm, he had never again given any of us a reason not to trust him. I left his house minutes later, having finished my coffee, and went again on my way towards the center of the Village. Near the corner of Circle and Main streets, the noise of a shopping cart being pushed on the asphalt preceded Merle and Mikki as he pushed it and they talk, Merle’s voice resounding loudly on the quiet street.

It was usual to meet them coming from that side of the Village. For a couple of weeks now, maybe a bit more, they had been living together in a house by the back wall. Something in the loss of Andrea had made their relationship move forward quickly, but naturally. Merle told me something about seeing Will’s pain and imagining how it would be for him to lose Mikki, and all fears and mental barriers keeping him from taking this step were gone. He said he just wanted to finally _live_ this, a relationship in its fullest like he’d never had in his life. Have a wife, a home, be a family man. The change was in his face. He smiled more, his eyes looked softer and more peaceful, and his face was now adorned with a full-grown salt and pepper beard, a contrast with his shaved head. Of course, Merle still had his vocabulary, was loud, and sometimes inappropriate with snarky comments, but everyone could see how much he had changed as a person. I was not surprised, I’d been seeing this change for a long, long time now.

My brother was happy.

“Well, now I wanna hear it, baby doll, what ideas ya got? Do it involve you, me, some candlelight, and a jar of maple?”

As I grew near I could hear Mikki’s answer too, “I’m not telling, babe, just wait and see,” and when Merle started insisting again, she moved on, “You’re gonna have to keep it in your imagination. And there’s Sam, hey Sam!”

I was smiling when I met them and Merle stopped the cart, “Hey, I wanna hear those ideas too!”

Merle laughed out loud, “There babe, not just me, now ya gotta tell me, slowly and in detail.”

“Not you too, Sam…” Mikki said with mocking exasperation.

“Yeah, well, maybe I’ll use some of those ideas back home too, who knows?” I asked crossing my arms and wiggling my eyebrows at her. They laughed and I strayed away from the matter. “That’s a lot of sap!”

“It’s a good start,” Merle said and pushed on the cart again, both Mikki and I following him as we turned the corner to Main Street, “Miranda gonna use this much to test, see if it works.”

“If it does we’ll do the drills and straws on the other maple trees,” Mikki completed. “There’s much more we can use and we’ll never be out of a sweetener again!”

“Shit, hope it works, can’t wait to make pancakes and drench it in syrup…” I dreamed.

“Top that with bacon and then we talkin’!” Merle said.

“Well, get us some pigs and we’ll surely do that!”

Speaking of food, there was a big pot of something boiling over the wood-burning stove we had built in the communal kitchen. This stove was a large, brick-built thing with its own annex wood-burning oven, a large counter as a working space, a fire pit to the side, a sink with running water, all a functional kitchen must have, all built under a roof to protect the cooking from the weather. This new kitchen was the entrance of the shed, a big space to fit us all together, with wood tables – some we had brought back home from runs out there and some we had made right here. On the back of the shed, after all the tables and sitting areas, there was a large round table and chairs. The area was now our meeting space, and from where I was standing, after entering the shed and stopping there to look around, I could see Maggie fixing a map to the wooden back wall.

Seeing Maggie reminded me of something. I walked over to the left side of the shed, where a large, wooden sliding door let to a second room, a large storage space. We had already moved everything in there: there was space for a food pantry, armoire for the weapons, shelves for medicine and infirmary supplies, a corner for clothes, fabrics, and any home utensils we could bring back and someone could have any use for. More than that, my new favorite area: an entire shelved, tall cabinet filled with books. We’d passed by a public library and also a bookstore during one of our runs and took a while to pick a few books. We basically brought back anything that could teach us how to do the most varied, general stuff. They were all basically instruction books. We’d use the knowledge found in one of them to build this shed itself: cob walls. There were many “for dummies” books that were more useful than any of us had imagined they’d be.

Knowledge was an asset just as valuable as food, weapons, and medicine. Almost as valuable as _people_.

I took what I went in there to take from the medicine cabinet, hid it on my waistband, and left the storage, sliding the heavy wooden door closed. Maggie was approaching in quick steps, looking around as she checked nobody was within earshot. I walked out of the shed ahead of her and we met on the side, alone.

“Did you get it?” she asked in a hurried voice.

“Yeah. We got three more in there if ya wanna make sure of the result later… But I think one’s enough,” I looked around once again and handed her the pregnancy test, which she instantly hid under her long-sleeved t-shirt.

“Thanks, Sam… I’m just too nervous about it, didn’t want Daddy or Beth to see me taking it, I don’t know –”

“Hey,” I reached for her and rub my hand up and down her arm. “Anytime alright?” and she nodded with a tight-lipped, nervous smile. “Do you want me to go with you?”

“Uh, no, Glenn knows, he’s waiting for me at home. We’ll do it together later.”

“Even better.”

“Yeah… He doesn’t want to show too much, but I know he’s excited about it. He wishes it’s positive.”

“And you?”

“I’m not so sure yet. I’m kinda… Terrified, to be honest. After what – you know.”

“I know. I’m scared of the thought too…”

“I guess you more than anyone else,” she whispered with an understanding look in her eyes.

I shook my head, “Don’t think about it now, Maggie. What happened to me, what happened to Lori, it was all terrible and I understand your fear, but nothing says it’d happen to you. It _will be fine_ this time. If it’s positive, you’ll have a whole family with you for support and a man who’ll be the best father,” I smiled at her as kindly as she was smiling at me now. “Will you let me know?”

She nodded, taking my hand to squeeze it once saying “As soon as possible, promise,” before turning away and leaving.

I tried not to worry too much about it as I had the breakfast that was made on the communal kitchen and ate at one of the tables inside the shed. From there, I saw both Daryl and Merle get their food bowls from the stove outside and leave again, walking together as they ate. Other people came to seat with me, Miranda, Tyreese, Carl, Michonne, Beth, Rick with Judith in his arms and it was nothing short of a family breakfast. It helped me not to think too much about Maggie and the test, but it was there at the back of my mind. It didn’t matter what I told Maggie about me feeling positive about it, I was scared for her and for any other woman who got pregnant here, but I did know it was gonna end up happening sometime. It would happen again and again, it was only natural, and someday it could happen to me. I was not ready at all right now, but it didn’t mean I wouldn’t be someday. It was scary but somehow a good scary, maybe? This time, if Maggie was really pregnant, we had structure, people, stability. It was going to be fine.

I took a morning shift at the platform after breakfast, and it was a quiet time. From up there I could see the people inside the Village going about their business; I saw when Beth, David, and Carl followed Daryl and Carol into the woods for their bow and arrow practice, Will and Hershel talking as they walked down Main Street to go start working on the garden, Merle trying to fix a motor and cursing aloud from inside the car hood and Honey chase a squirrel who disappeared atop a tree. I lit up a cigarette and took a sip of the cup of coffee Morales had handed me minutes ago. There were two walkers approaching from the left on the road, and I allowed them to get a bit closer before shooting an arrow into its forehead, reloading and shooting the second.

At about the time my shift was over and I had already retrieved my arrows from the dead bodies on the road and was back inside, the visitors we’d been expecting for today arrived. Tara’s niece, Lilly, jumped off their truck followed by the big German Sheppard Tara had found weeks ago wandering around the woods. Lilly waved me an excited hello as she asked if the training was going on and barely heard when I told her it had been going on for a while and they were probably done already and ran freely followed by the dog down the street in search for the other kids. Tara yelled some warnings to be careful around the arrows but I don’t think the girl heard her.

Paul and Jerry also came out and after all the hugs and quick conversation, I led them to the shed, where the others were already arriving for the meeting we’d be having today. It was nothing specific, no urging matter or anything, but I’d set for our communities to gather at least once every couple of weeks to do some trading and talk about how things were going. And of course, to see friends. I liked those guys very much. The kind of friendship we were developing could mean a lot for the future.

Around the table inside the shed, we talked about the new calf that had been born at Woodbury, their plans for future runs, their borrowing Morales and Mikki’s project and construction knowledge to build a new watch platform on their back gate, the new people they had found out there and taken in, and then about the production of maple syrup, Hershel’s farm idea, the share of the puppies Honey was probably gonna have eventually now there was their dog around, our next building ideas, reports about walker activity in the area surrounding our communities.

Which led me to talk about things I’d had in mind for a long while now. There was a map of Georgia on the table and all of us standing around it – Daryl as always by my side, and the others, Michonne, Merle, Carol, Tara, Paul, and Jerry.

“Do anyone realize it’s been a year?” I asked them. “An exact, whole fuckin’ year. I kept track of time and I don’t know what _day_ it is or the weekday or anything, but I know that this whole thing completed a full year yesterday,” by my side, Daryl nodded with his arms crossed. Of course, I had told him that before the meeting. With a proud smile, I told them, “which means today is _day one of Year Two_.” I looked around and saw conflicting looks on my friend’s faces, smiles mixed with sad eyes, impressed raised eyebrows. “Feels like a decade with so much shit that happened and everyone we lost who didn’t get to make it to this anniversary…”

 _Jack._ Michonne’s son Andrè. Jackie, Jim, Amy. The Morales’ kids, the farm people, Otis, Patricia, Jimmy. Dale, Lori, T-Dog, Ma, Andrea.

“Too many of them,” I continued. “But we’re here. Most of us made it, we’re not just surviving anymore, we’re actually _living_ , and for me, this mean _we made it_. We’re building the thing that comes _after_ , two growing communities, no food problems anymore, walls, safety, a good back-up plan with the prison. Up here north,” I pointed at it on the map, “we found that campus we gonna go back to clear, could be a fourth safe place. So what I’m thinking,” and I moved my finger to point directly at the place where the Village was, its shape drawn on the otherwise empty area with a sharpie, and made a circle around it, Woodbury, the prison and the campus, creating an area in the middle, “is of this whole huge space we got in the middle.”

“Whole lotta good stuff ‘round…” Merle mused, arms crossed and nodding.

“Farms, small towns, woods, beds of water,” Daryl completed. “We use it all right and secure it for our communities, we’re good for decades.”

“Like a county,” Carol affirmed, her mind clearing following ours. “We already got two towns, nothing to stop us from founding more.”

“Exactly,” I said with a sharp nod, smiling. “What I mean is that, from now on… _We dream even bigger_.”

* * *

Merle threw the empty lighter on the couch after trying to light it repeatedly, the joint hanging from his lips. Daryl fished his own from the internal pocket of the angel vest and threw it at his brother, who caught it in the air and with no afterthought, lit it up. I dried my hands in a towel after washing a dish on the sink and joined them in the living room on time to see Merle extend his legs and rest his booted, muddied feet on the chair under the window.

“Gonna make ya lick that pillow clean,” I said as I extended my hand, gesturing him to pass the joint.

He took one more quick drag and handed it to me, held his breath for the moment that it took me to kick off my shoes and drop onto the couch by his side, and said “Brother, control yer woman.”

“Impossible,” Daryl said with his low, raspy voice and jumped up to sit on the kitchen counter.

“So, like a county, yeah?” Merle asked. “What’s that gonna make ya? A Chief-Admin-fuckin’-someth’?”

As I held my breath after smoking, I said “I don’t know what it make me”, I blew off the smoke and continued, “but I know it make ya _Sheriff_!” and I laughed aloud as did Merle.

“Sheriff Dixon,” Daryl said in his laugh, “now there’s something I never thought I’d hear.”

“Hey, it’s a strong name,” I said as I lifted myself a little to pass Daryl’s outstretched hand the joint.

“Nah, not in this fuckin’ life I’m gonna let ya call me that,” Merle shook his head emphatically. “Ain’t nothing gonna make me be one of _them_ , even now.”

“ ’Sides there’s already a Sheriff Grimes ‘round,” Daryl said gesturing Merle to get up and take the joint. “Ya been workin’ together. Workin’ fine, ain’t it?”

“Workin’ as it should. We both want the same things for this place, so there’s that.”

“Mich trusts him. So I do too,” I told them.

“Yeah, we’ll see,” Merle said proving my knowledge that he would never _really_ forgive and trust Rick. “But if he fucks things up with _Mich_ …”

“We’ll kill him ourselves,” I said nodding and taking the joint from Merle’s hand again. “And he gonna have to come to my door to ask my permission!”

Ok, maybe I was already high by now.

“That still a thing?” Daryl asked.

“Well, we gotta look out for our family.”

“Hey,” he said looking at me with a thoughtful look on his face, an unlit cigarette hanging from his lips, and when I looked at him he said, “ya wanna get married?”

I was stunned in silence for a few seconds, my eyebrow rising high in my head. Then in a big smile, I said, “Uhm, yeah?”

As if nothing too out of the ordinary had happened, Daryl pointed at his brother and said “Merle can officialize us.”

“Hey, no way, if I officialize then I can’t be ya best man, come on!”

“We’ll ask Hershel,” I said, moving on with the conversation and taking another drag of the joint, which was half gone already, “ ‘Cause he’s, you know… Old. Elder. Our eldest and yaknow…” I mumbled and extended a hand for Daryl to take the joint.

“Yeah, he can do a bible thing,” Merle said as he held his hands out as if holding a book in front of his face.

“No!” Daryl and I said at the same time just as he took it from my hand and I continued as I dropped back onto the couch, “No bible thing, it’s all… Somethin’ else now.”

“Ya realize we can kinda decide what we wanna believe now,” Daryl said as if he’d been thinking about it for a long time now. But no, he was just high, “I mean, ya still believe there’s a God?”

“Ya know, I kinda do. I didn’t before but –” I said and lifted my hands to kind of defend myself from arguments, “No, hear me out. I think God is Nature. Nature, yaknow? We’re in it, we’re all kinda pieces of it. All the goodness that people told us God meant and wanted from us is like simply respecting it, not destroying it and its creatures and living all in peace with it.”

After a second of silence in which I was in my mind seeing images of goodness and nature, Merle laughed out loud, “Damn girl, ya high as a hill right now!”

Daryl let out a loud laugh as I still tried to tell them I was right and they both laughed more at that, until I couldn’t argue anymore and just laughed with them. It was dark outside and the Village was still awake, but the sounds of the daily life were already starting to fade. So our uninhibited laughter certainly sounded very loud over the silent, dark streets and the trees on the forest outside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So here it is. Done!
> 
> I've been writing this story for YEARS, started as stopped a couple of times, and finally published it. This last chapter was a labor of love, it was difficult to get it out because it would mean the end of an era for me, the end of a story that had been in my mind for a long time. I am happy and feeling accomplished, and the fact that so many of you liked and followed and comment on it during the whole process means more to me than any of you can ever imagine. Thank you for having been here. I really hope you like this ending. I tried to show that the Village and Sam's group still have a lot coming for them, lots of plans and ideas and possibilities. Their story will never really be over.
> 
> The next one is already in the oven, starting, but I'll take a while to publish it. I hope to see you all again!


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